I realize that America is a country of immigrants. People who have left their birthplace behind to travel thousands of miles around the world to start a new life. Even my family came to America from both Poland and Italy generations ago to live in America. Immigrants flocking to America began hundreds of years ago when Christopher Columbus discovered this great country, has continued through today – and will continue for as long as this country accepts the rest of the world’s “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. But there is a big difference between the immigrants of today and those that came before them. The immigrants of today make sure they have everything they need to survive in America – jobs, homes, transportation, and education for their children. But of all the things that newcomers to this country acquire once they get here – the one thing they forget to acquire is a basic understanding of the English Language.

In the beginning of the 1900s, Ellis Island welcomed thousands of immigrants to America. From countries all over the world, families came here sometimes with only the clothes on their back and a dream of life in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. Those immigrants knew that in order to fulfill their dream of a better life – they had to work really hard to get it. So many of them got jobs washing dishes, building homes, or shining shoes just to start earning money and begin the long, hard road toward their dream. More importantly – they knew that the only way they would be able to live here is to speak the language of their new neighbors. I just wish the immigrants of today would do the same.

Personally, I can’t stand when I am in a store and I ask an employee of that store for something and they look at me like I have three heads. For example, my friend Uri and I went to Domino’s Pizza for lunch. After we ordered and were waiting for a few minutes, I asked the man who took my order how long the pizza would take – he responded, “One dollar fifty cents.” Bewildered, I asked again – only to get the same response. After a third attempt at this simple question, I realized that he thought I asked how much it was for water – I can see where he got confused.

In my opinion, businesses should not hire employees that do not speak English or at least have some kind of grasp of the language – which by the way is the most common spoken language in the world. I feel that on an employee application, it should ask if you speak English. In addition, if the employer is interviewing a potential employee and realizes during the course of the interview that the candidate for employment does not understand him – then they should not hire that person.

I have to admit that I blame a lot of the reasons for having so many non-English speaking residents in this country on our society itself. Look at ATM machines – before you begin your transaction – you have to press a button if you want to continue in English. Besides that – how many signs do you see in your neighborhood stores that are written in other languages? Besides the fact that it is a New York State Law that all storefront, business and advertising signs must be in English – have you ever been overseas to countries like Japan? You would have to search for a really long time before you find a sign in a language other then Japanese. So why are we so obliging?

Another reason why people feel they do not need to speak the same language that we do is because speaking English is not a requirement for citizenship. Instead, the questions on the citizenship test ask prospective citizens what the three colors on the American Flag are, and what the name of our National Anthem is. My opinion – stop asking newcomers to this country what color George Washington’s white horse was and force them to learn English in order to gain citizenship in America. That is beneficial to both the new citizen and the people that already live here. The new citizens would have an easier time adapting to their new homeland and might even get better jobs because of their fluency in English – and the citizens that live here would not get aggravated when they ask a new citizen how long their pizza will take and get told “One dollar fifty cents”.

God Bless America.