Mute In An English-Only World Analysis

“Native American Indians actually migrated to the American continent from Asia.” “Before Maori waded to New Zealand, they had lived on mountains in Taiwan.” Students often times heard these theories in their history classes and had a hard time to believe those, but, in fact, the history of human migration is just as long as the history of mankind, and the most common reason behind migrating is for seeking a more suitable environment. Human beings, as living creature themselves, are fully aware of what living environment is able to influence their lives in a very early period. Without a doubt, 10,000 years ago, migrating from one continent to another might need the effort of few generations of human beings. As modern transportations had been
Obviously, Talking is the basic human ability that creates communications. Therefore, learning the new language becomes the very first aspect of fitting into a new environment even though the learning process can be troublesome for some people. In his essay “Mute in an English-Only World”, Chang-rae Lee describes the difficulties that his Mom had when they immigrated to America at very first year without fully developed English speaking skill: “I saw every day the exacting price and power of language, especially with my mother, who was an outsider in an English-only world…She often encountered great difficulty whenever she went out” (541). Moreover, language is a part of the culture that becoming more suitable in new environment and being more acceptable by local residents are vastly depend upon learning it. For instance, if those Mexican workers who worked at Framingville could speak better English and explained themselves a bit more, the situation will be shifted at least with some conversations of ironing the problems out, instead of the intense conflicts that took place there. The other way of thinking it is that people often times use national language as a determination of national identity, which means that speaking the same language can actually close the gap between local residents and immigrants. This point
For example, the United States of America has had larger immigrants’ population than any other nations in this world, also including a large number of illegal immigrants. From the film “Immigration: Promise and Hope for Generations”, National Academy of Sciences released a report that said immigration produces substantial economic benefits for the United States as a whole, adding perhaps ten billion dollars a year to the United States economic output. The academy study also revealed that while immigrant households are costly at first because of the public education costs they impose on state and local governments.(Immigration) Most immigrants produce fiscal benefits as they finish school, start working, and begin to pay income and par roll taxes. In addition, many of immigrants in U.S take low-paying, unskilled jobs that even the poorest Americans do not want. Contrary to popular opinion, immigrants rarely steal jobs from native born Americans. In fact, one study found that “the ten state with the highest immigrant presence had a lower unemployment rate than the ten states with the lowest immigrant presence”(Immigration). In some instances, the job prospects of low-skilled, native born workers sometimes were hurt by competition with immigrants. But a RAND corporation study said