When you talk to people who are against immigration, do you ever hear this? “My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned English to survive. Why can’t today?s immigrants do the same?” It turns out this isn’t true.
Researcher Joseph Salmons, who has studied European immigrant languages in the Midwest, discovered that little research had been done about how quickly past immigrants learned their adopted country?s language.
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In this political season, the hot topic of immigration will come up again. One way to follow the trail of migrating human beings is to study MOUSE genes, since they came along with us.
BBC News quotes researcher Jeremy Searle as saying, “If we look at the genetic patterning of the mice, we find they have patterning that very much relates to human history; and so we get a particular genetic type of mouse that is found in the region where the Norwegian Vikings operated.
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Newswise – The government is using illegal Mexican immigrants to clean up damage from Katrina. Meanwhile, President Bush wants to create a “guest worker” program, somewhat like the “brasero” program of the 1940s and 50s.
Economist Paul Hancock says the use of migrant labor to harvest America’s crops is a product of policy decisions dating back to 1909. He says, “It’s far more complex than conventional economic principals about the supply and demand of labor. Economic, political and cultural processes, operating in both the United States and in nations that send migrant workers to the United States, are at work. Unfortunately, few people have examined migrant labor in anything other than simplistic economic terms.”
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