"Press '1' for English. And illegal immigration.

Welcome to another exciting post of "This Week's Rant is about..."! So far as I've seen there aren't very many people reading this yet, but I'm hoping that will change. Anyways onto what I'm using this thing for.

As I was calling my bank to get an exact amount on how pathetic my checking account was, the very first thing I had to do prompted this rant.

"Press '1' for English."

Now, I don't know who else this bothers, but I know that I'm not the only one. I understand that this is a nation of diversity and all that jazz, but the official language here is, and has been, English.

I should not have to press a single button to understand the phone number that I called. If you want Spanish, push a button. French, push a button. Hungarian? You may just want to give up on the phone thing, at least here. But not English. No, I don't care how many different languages there are here, I shouldn't have to push a single, damn button to get my message in the language of this country.

And it's not just the big businesses with the "Press '1' for English" that pesters me, while I'm on the topic of language.

It's all well and good for you to speak whatever language you speak in your home, or your home country. But when you go into public, you should not expect every single person to be able to know exactly what you're saying or run off to find someone who can.

You have to speak English to get your citizenship, so you might as well keep speaking it. Or, if you were never granted citizenship, go back to where you ran from, and start over, do it the right way. There's no reason you had to cut off the thousands of people waiting in line to become U.S. citizens. If you're coming here for legitimate reasons, then you haven't got any excuse to come here without U.S. citizenship. Stop stealing our welfare and screwing up our taxes because you were too lazy to get a green card.

People can say whatever they want to say about how great immigrant workers are, and you know what? I agree with them. They are great at what they do. But don't encourage the ones who cheated the legal system to get here. They're stealing jobs.

And before I get one of those "superior-than-thou" people on here, I'm not talking like most people. I'm not saying they're taking those jobs (like dishwasher, McDonald's drive-thru man, or other low income jobs) from "hard-working Americans". Because we all know that hard-working Americans are not doing those jobs.

They're taking those jobs away from their brothers and sisters who have legitimately come here to better their lives. Among other things, they manage to get free money from the government through welfare, or they get the jobs more frequently, because the government can't track them, so companies pay them $2 an hour.

This undermines the other immigrants who have gone through the naturalization process and would actually require being paid minimum wage or higher.

In short, English should be automatic. There is no excuse for an immigrant to not become a naturalized citizen, and any illegals need to be deported and then they can do it the right way.

Anyways, thanks for reading along.
---- A Swift Wandering Mind

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Preview - Next Week's Rant will be on: The Welfare System