On the whole Language and Culture.

Australia is much like that, vacuuming people from all over the world.
The official language of Australia (Excluding the native language) is English and is a requirement to be a functional member of society. There are TAFE (Like a school for anyone over 15 to go to, to learn work skills) where they can learn "English as a second language" which is AFAIK free.

This country doesn't have an official language. English is the de facto language.

I have to apologize for the Hitler reference, they're way overused(particularly by the right), and my anger got the better of me. The process of labeling and rounding people and families up still seems shockingly similar, but I thought I was above such comparisons.

On a related note, I just heard on the news that some Republicans are actually proposing we use predator drones to secure the border. We're talking about families here, with nowhere else to go, and these bastards want to shoot them with missiles. Because they're brown. I feel like vomiting...

Illegal immigrants aren't second class citizens. They aren't citizens PERIOD. Also, you lose by way of Godwin.


Your historical knowledge of the racial politics of the various parties is broken if you think that Republicans (Abraham Lincoln's party) were the source of all racial woes in this country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act_%28United_States%29


On the other hand, the unions, a hot bed of populist and Democratic sentiment, were entirely in favor of it.

Tammany Hall turned the northern Democrats into the party of white immigration, but the most violently racist nonsense was still being spewed by the southern Democrats, and that didn't change until Reagan's coalition gave them a chance to party hop.

I would imagine they'd be used mainly as recon drones...

Even if they are used to shoot Mexicans, so what? It's not their skin tone. Other races (including whites) are excluded from illegal immigration as well and can be fired upon if they fail to respond to officers. The Mexicans know that they are not allowed in illegally and that they run the risk of losing their lives if they do.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have new people here, as long as they enter through a legal means. That goes for whites, browns, blacks, reds, blues, greens, purples, and indigos. I don't care about their race, they can all follow the rules.

Because that is just wrong, not to mention illegal. If they actually used predator drones to shoot at Mexicans, the US would get gang banged by the rest of the world. It blatantly violates the Geneva Convetion, which the US has adopted (meaning it would violate US policies as well as international ones). It also violates the US's rules of engagement.

Not to mention the political backlash from that would be immense.

But ignoring all that, its disgustingly wrong. Its government sanctioned murder of innocent people, pure and simple.

Fascinating, I wasn't aware it wasn't official. Confirmation from Wikipedia:

The fact that we use De Facto instead of Default is proof in and of itself of how much English we don't speak...

No, de facto is the proper term because in a law setting it means "in practice or actuality, but without being officially established", wheras default means "failure to do something required by law".

Right, but it comes from another language, and translates literally to "Default" even if the legal meaning we've adopted for it is different.

Clearly your vocabulary is lacking, as a *ton* of "English" words are from foreign languages.

English is a vacuum of just about every western language smashed together....

Not to be pedantic, but did Kllrnohj really just misuse your/you're?

That appears to be the situation...

No, the significant influences are Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) grammar+vocabulary and Latin (Gallo-Romano) vocabulary. There are smatterings of words from other sources but those are the significant contributors.


Also, the idea of a vacuum of things smashed together doesn't really make sense.

Uh, no?

My point was our own language already makes use of words from other languages; we're already influenced by these other cultures...

No, apparently only German and Latin.

The lack of intelligence in this thread is astounding.