[Lincolnian]

Originally Posted by Smallville

I know, right? Santana certainly isn't white lol.

Seeing as at the time the concert was advertised with sound clips from the then popular tunes with Michelle Branch and the singer from Matchbox Twenty as well as Santana classics and those songs were noticeably absent from the 1st half of the show which included an African singer wailing a tribal tune for 45 minutes it wasn't what most of the ticket buyers expected.

Most people really weren't all that thrilled with the America bashing and the proclamation of a wish for a socialist nation where Spanish can be the prefered language for Hartford over English in conducting everyday business.

I'm sorry but if Spanish were to become the prime language of our state's capital we can kiss our future goodbye. I may be of the minority opinion on this forum but I believe like our past great president, Teddy Roosevelt, that English should be the official language of the United States.

"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country." - Theodore Roosevelt

[canuckexpat]

When we moved to CT my husband went to get his SSN for his work visa and while we were waiting the entire room spoke Spanish. All of a sudden a homeless person walks in(this is the New Britain office) talking to himself and sits behind us. One of the ladies that works in the office comes out and asks in English if anyone else is waiting for SS benefits. The homeless guy turns to everyone and says in Spanish:"What does she think she is doing by speaking English? Does she not know we don't understand English?" My husband's family is from Spain so he is fluent in Spanish and I also speak Spanish, so we turned and looked at him but did not say a word.

That was not the end of the adventure. My husband is here on a work visa and as per that visa the spouse is not allowed to work(I can go to school and pay triple the tuition if I wanted to) or get a SSN. However I lived in the US in the early 90s as a foreign student for 3 years and at that time I got a SSN(for driver's license) and I wanted to know what happened with that number after I left the US.

I said to the lady:" I know I am not allowed to work but can I still use that number for ID purposes(like banks, utility companies etc)?

She says to me: Yes you can use it but you can also work. So she starts typing something in the computer and says she can give me work authorization.

My husband and I spent about 10min explaining to her that as per his visa I was not allowed to work but she kept telling us we were wrong, until at one point the computer stopped her from giving me the work authorization.

So when you have people like this working at the SS office no wonder there are millions of illegals in this country.

Average American has no clue what it takes to get a green card in this country(easily 5-7 years if you go the legal way). When I tell people I can't work here because of my husband's visa all I hear is: "Can't you not get a green card?" As if a GC was something you can buy at Walgreens or Walmart. I am not saying everyone should know as much as an immigration lawyer but you should at least have some sense that if you come to this country on any other visa and you try to get a GC, it is not a quick and easy procedure(the legal one).

As for the post above about official language, I recently heard that US does not have a law that says that English is the official language, so of course illegals will take advantage of that. At least in Canada we have two official languages: English and French and those are the languages you conduct business with the government.

[Rich Lee]

Originally Posted by canuckexpat

As for the post above about official language, I recently heard that US does not have a law that says that English is the official language, so of course illegals will take advantage of that.

We don't have an official language. The closest thing we had was in the 1880s when the issue was relegated to each state to require schooling be done in English and not German!

In many of the midwestern states, Germans were the majority at that time.