>>For chrissakes! Some of you are so caught up in your politically correct, "let's not offend, but love each other" little worlds that you've turned a blind eye to what's going on in the real world.
Sure this is off-topic, but since some of you here are so quick to accuse others of being racist and reactionary instead of looking at all the facts glaringly present, here are some links to articles you might want to peruse. Of course, since you stubbornly cling on to your "everything's rosy" beliefs, you'll probably just dismiss them all as racist rhetoric<<
One word: RECONQUISTA
Like it or loat it, the "illegal" brown invaders are repossessing the land (through peaceful and non-violent means), from the uninvited European invaders, that was stolen from their cousins centuries ago. Oh the irony, poetic justice isn't that what they call it?
Well, one cannot really say that such is any kind of "reconquista" at the political level, for it is almost certain that the immigrant population, legal or not, will be absorbed into the US as a whole within a few generations at most, and it seems like there is very little chance of such displacing the European-based and English-speaking prestige culture as a whole, for better or for worse. Rather, in the long run, it will most likely just be one large immigrant group like any other, albeit one that is more openly visible within society, unlike many European ones which are only at all outwardly visible in things like surnames and like, and one that may potentially stay more coherent as a specific group in many areas, unlike many European groups which have been practically completely absorbed except for in areas where they have been the majority or plurality group for an extended period of time.
Travis : "It is almost certain that the immigrant population, legal or not, will be absorbed into the US as a whole within a few generations at most".
Wishful thinking.
Why does any of this matter? If they wanna come, let them. If you have a problem with it, move, or suck it up. It's wrong for one group of people to tell another group of people what to do and not do.
greg, it's less a matter of whether I *want* it to happen or not, it's just that there is nothing that points to such happening otherwise, at least with respect to language, as while the amount of Spanish-speakers within the US has been increasing, this has only been primarily new immigrants, and not their descendents, which seem to become primarily English-speaking rather quickly overall, all things considered. I am not the biggest fan of linguistic assimilation, as a whole, but in this case there is nothing that points to anything but such, one way or another. The thing though is that linguistic assimilation has a tendency to be also linked to cultural assimilation, due to the close identification of language with culture, as a whole, as well as the easy identification of a group as separate from another if they natively speak some language other than what said other group natively speaks, and hence with speaking English, the likelihood of maintaining a separate cultural identity that isn't purely regional in basis is also significantly reduced.