Aight boys I know I said I was gonna be gone but I have some thoughts.
I’m in France right now staying with a host family. French is my second language, by which I mean I’ve taken three years of high school french. I’m lucky. Had a good teacher. I can read french intended for adult speakers fluently. But even these people here know that they can speak french to each other in front of me and I won’t catch on to much. They speak slower to me so I can understand them. I’m an intelligent guy in english but here I can barely hold conversation with a five year old.
On the other hand, every adult I’ve met here has taken 10+ years of english. They for the most part can’t make full sentences.
Now imagine you come from a place where education isn’t as easy. Where it’s not free. Some people coming into the united states haven’t had even three years of english. And some of them have had many more. But english is hard compared to a lot of other languages, and the education you have received may have been spotty at best. Take that along with the prejudices you’re already experiencing as an immigrant. And when you speak english people make no effort to understand, nor do they make themselves easier to understand. All they tell you is to learn english. Throw in when people have different accents (I’m here in Bretagne and let me tell you paris was a cakewalk. I can’t imagine learning british english and then going to the deep south)
What I’m trying to get at here is that people who have english as a second language are hard as hell and if you make fun of people’s english or their accent or don’t think refugees should be allowed in without passing a language test (or honestly if you don’t think we should be trying to let more refugees/immigrants in at all) or go into other places and instead of trying to speak the language you just speak english louder then I would love to peesonally fight you