Population of the US Tops 300 Million!

[Eroica]

U. S. POPClock

[NEOWatcher]

U. S. POPClock

Old news. That was all over the headlines on monday and tuesday.
It means absolutely nothing...
First: the count is only an estimate
Second: the number is just an arbitrary line to cross.

Anyway; it happened at 7:46 am yesterday and I don't notice any difference.

[Chuck]

Jay Leno showed a clip of the 300 millionth American sneaking across the border from Mexico, so it must be real.

[NEOWatcher]

Apparently, it'snot growing fast enough...

[Casus_belli]

300 Million? Havent you randy devils heard of condoms?

[Gillianren]

300 Million? Havent you randy devils heard of condoms?

If it were just births, the US would pretty much be at zero population growth. However, we are a very popular country to immigrate to.

[galacsi]

What is the part in this growth of natural increase and of immigration ? Is the "native" american population aka whites and blacks increasing at all ?

[NEOWatcher]

What is the part in this growth of natural increase and of immigration ? Is the "native" american population aka whites and blacks increasing at all ?

Some of the statistics are here in cnn's article
a child is born every seven seconds, but a death occurs every 13 seconds.
... a migrant enters the country every 31 seconds.

[Doodler]

Jay Leno showed a clip of the 300 millionth American sneaking across the border from Mexico, so it must be real.

[Disinfo Agent]

You guys have got to do something about that population explosion problem of yours.

[NEOWatcher]

You guys have got to do something about that population explosion problem of yours.

Our population doesn't explode...It's just road rage.

[Doodler]

You guys have got to do something about that population explosion problem of yours.

We are... I already have to "Press 1 for English" with just about every voice over phone service we have over here...

I do miss the old days when it was "English by default", even "English and doom on you if you can't understand what I'm saying".

[Gillianren]

We are... I already have to "Press 1 for English" with just about every voice over phone service we have over here...

I do miss the old days when it was "English by default", even "English and doom on you if you can't understand what I'm saying".

You know, 200 years ago, there were enough German-speakers for the US to at least consider making that the official language. Besides, we've (more than once) taken over land where the native language wasn't English, then gotten snippy at the people because they didn't speak it.

[Larry Jacks]

Besides, we've (more than once) taken over land where the native language wasn't English, then gotten snippy at the people because they didn't speak it.

And the last time we did that was when? In the meantime, my wife (a Filipina immigrant), my stepsons, and one of my daughters-n-law (all first generation immigrants) are fully fluent in English. They didn't become citizens and expect ballots printed in Tagalog, either. What excuse do people who've been here for a long time, sometimes generations, have for not learning English? If you or I immigrated to any other country, we'd be expected to learn the native language. Why shouldn't they?

[Doodler]

What's spoken amongst themselves for cultural, personal, or religious reasons is their business. What's spoken as the language of trade and government is a slightly different animal.

[Casus_belli]

Immigration seems to be the big thing everywhere now. Even in the cold N.E of Scotland there has been a huge influx from eastern europe. Parts of my hometown are now known locally as "Little Moscow"

Personally Im fine with it but there is a fair bit of resentment from the "they're taking all our jobs brigade"

[Doodler]

I don't personally have an issue with immigration. If the jobs aren't being done, they're free to take them.

Uncontrolled illegal immigration, that I've got issue with, but that tends to be too close to the political line to discuss here.

[Maksutov]

The Daily Show's take on this was to show the digital population display hitting 3,000,000 and two babies competing for being that number. Then they showed an old guy (i.e., someone looking a lot like me) snuffing it outside his doorway, and the digital population display resetting back to 2,999,999.

[Swift]

<snip>
What excuse do people who've been here for a long time, sometimes generations, have for not learning English? If you or I immigrated to any other country, we'd be expected to learn the native language. Why shouldn't they?

I have seen little evidence that people who have been here for generations have not learned English. Even most first generation immigrants learn it, but if they don't, their children do.

As others have said, this is really nothing new. When my father's relatives came over from German, they settled in Southern Ohio and they spoke German. My great-grandmother was born in the US, but didn't speak English till she was in her teens.

[Maksutov]

I have seen little evidence that people who have been here for generations have not learned English. Even most first generation immigrants learn it, but if they don't, their children do.

As others have said, this is really nothing new. When my father's relatives came over from German, they settled in Southern Ohio and they spoke German. My great-grandmother was born in the US, but didn't speak English till she was in her teens.

Ja.

One of my grandmothers came from the Germantown district of Danbury, CT, and remained bilingual all her life. The other was born in Lithuania and taught herself English, but was still fluent in Lithuanian all her life.

It's neat being able to swear in German and Lithuanian!

Thank you, grandmothers!

[Argos]

[I] If you or I immigrated to any other country, we'd be expected to learn the native language.

The Germans in some southern Brazilian towns donīt seem to think like that...Theyīre in the eighth German-speaking generation.

It seems to me that in order to your native speaking be tolerated in a foreign country it all depends on how much money youīve got and how fair is your skin (the Bolivian immigrants here canīt rely on the same tolerant attitude).

[Disinfo Agent]

You know, 200 years ago, there were enough German-speakers for the US to at least consider making that the official language.

That's an oft-retold myth, I'm afraid.

On January 13, 1795, Congress considered a proposal, not to give German any official status, but merely to print the federal laws in German as well as English. [...]

One month later, on February 16, 1795, the House once again considered the question of promulgating the laws, and among the issues, once again, was translating the federal statutes into German. [...] The House finally approved publication of current and future federal statutes in English only.

link

And for Argos:

The English-only nativists who attacked the Germans used arguments similar to those heard nowadays against newer immigrants. Benjamin Franklin considered the Pennsylvania Germans to be a “swarthy” racial group distinct from the English majority in the colony. In 1751 he complained, “Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?” (The papers of Benjamin Franklin. Ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959. vol 4:234).

[Argos]

Disinfo, in fact I canīt complain of anything, since I am myself a grandson of immigrants [all of whom struggled hard to learn the local idiom].

[Larry Jacks]

I have seen little evidence that people who have been here for generations have not learned English. Even most first generation immigrants learn it, but if they don't, their children do.

Ever been to Colorado, New Mexico, or Arizona? A Hispanic friend of mine told me about the crap he took for teaching his kids English instead of Spanish. It's all too common here in the Southwest.

[Gillianren]

Studies clearly show that while a large percentage of Hispanic immigrants don't necessarily learn English, by the time three generations have passed, only 5% speak any Spanish at all above the Sesame Street level. Basically, what we seem to be dealing with is the fact that adults don't learn a new language as well as children do, a fact which should be obvious to everybody.

As to printing ballots, etc., in other languages, hey, why not? Not enough people vote anyway, so why not encourage people no matter what language they speak? Likewise in hospitals--do you want people to die because they're bad at learning languages?

[Larry Jacks]

As to printing ballots, etc., in other languages, hey, why not? Not enough people vote anyway, so why not encourage people no matter what language they speak?

One of the requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen is a working knowledge of English. Besides, in any major city like LA*, you can easily have immigrants from dozens of languages. Which ones do you pick to translate the ballots into?

*When LA hosted the 1984 Olympics, they proudly boasted that they had immigrants from every single participating nation living in LA, over 100 nations in all. How many languages to you suppose that represents?

Likewise in hospitals--do you want people to die because they're bad at learning languages?

Now that's just a vile insult. My wife is a multi-lingual nurse who is currently working for a major insurance company on worker's comp cases. She tells me of the hassles of having to go through intrepreters when dealing with many non-English speaking clients. When you don't even have to try to learn the local language, why bother at all if people like you are always willing to accommodate them?

[Gillianren]

One of the requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen is a working knowledge of English. Besides, in any major city like LA*, you can easily have immigrants from dozens of languages. Which ones do you pick to translate the ballots into?

*When LA hosted the 1984 Olympics, they proudly boasted that they had immigrants from every single participating nation living in LA, over 100 nations in all. How many languages to you suppose that represents?

Well, you know, I lived in LA once upon a time (1976-1995). Easily the largest proportion of people speak Spanish. Tagalog, Armenian, and Chinese were also big--and, you know, for any given dialect of Chinese, and even some of the other regional languages, it's all the same set of characters. Besides, I consider most ballot initiatives to require more than a working knowledge of English to really understand; I don't think most Americans understand enough English to really get them. Even I don't read the actual text half the time. Further, most immigrants end up in communites containing other immigrants from roughly the same place, so you wouldn't really need to have, say, Vietnamese-language ballots in a heavily Hispanic region.

Now that's just a vile insult. My wife is a multi-lingual nurse who is currently working for a major insurance company on worker's comp cases. She tells me of the hassles of having to go through intrepreters when dealing with many non-English speaking clients. When you don't even have to try to learn the local language, why bother at all if people like you are always willing to accommodate them?

But they aren't. Up here, the hospitals are obliged to provide you with a translator, but Target isn't. You can't watch movies in a lot of the languages spoken by immigrants I've personally known. Music that's popular in their homelands is very seldom available in American stores, and the foreign-language section in most libraries and bookstores is very small. Basically, in order to watch TV, either you watch it in English or you watch maybe three (at most) channels in your native tongue--and that's if you're Hispanic in LA. We have one Spanish-language channel here and two that play a show or two in about six different languages, and that's it. I think public services should be required to provide translators--how quickly would you learn medical terms in a foreign language?--but I don't think stores should be. I do think people should learn the primary language of the country to which they immigrate, true--but how much effort did our ancestors put into learning the languages of the tribes whose land they stole?

[sarongsong]

[Los Angeles] Multilingual Voter Services was established to provide translations and oral assistance to voters who speak:
Chinese,
Japanese,
Korean,
Spanish,
Tagalog, or
Vietnamese. lavote.net (Note: .pdf file)

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