Suppose you claimed you could save a business money by getting rid of "hundreds of employees who are stealing from work" and then you get the job... but you lied.

There aren't really 100s of employees stealing from work. What would you do?

First fire the one or two who might really be stealing. But now what?

Fumble around and see who else you can fire?

And what happens when the company doesn't start saving "so much money" because all of the crooks are gone?

ICE is going after green card holding spouses of American citizens. Children, anyone they can think of to try to meet that number.

And all of the "easy" cases are gone. They target people for not speaking English (less public sympathy, because people are terrible) they target poor people who might fight back less.

Recently the 3000 a day has been more like about 1000. Those are deportations. The number of arrests and detentions is much less clear.

I'm trying to keep an eye on those detentions because that is very sinister.

But if they fail, and I hope they do, to do anything like a significant population shift what will Republicans think when they still hear Spanish on the bus? Because Spanish is one of the most popular American languages. And most of the people Republicans assume aren't citizens ... are.

@futurebird when my Mexican American grandparents were young parents, there was a strong push to make speaking Spanish shameful. My dad and one of his siblings ended up learning no Spanish because of that.

Is that where we're headed again? Would that even be feasible? There are so many Latinos here now. Then again, German Americans were a very large minority and gave up their language because of prejudice, so who knows

@MLE_online

I think it's very clear that they are targeting people who can't speak much English then they "decide" that whatever they've said in Spanish (or a few other languages) is "I'm here illegally" there have been multiple cases where ICE officers claimed in their report someone came up to them and announced "I'm here illegally" and they use that to meet the court order of reasonable suspicion.

It doesn't work as well on someone who speaks English.

I'm trying to keep an eye on those detentions because that is very sinister.

But if they fail, and I hope they do, to do anything like a significant population shift what will Republicans think when they still hear Spanish on the bus? Because Spanish is one of the most popular American languages. And most of the people Republicans assume aren't citizens ... are.

Spanish is historically USA’s first settler colonial language. fuckers always start with the Mayflower and never with Ponce de León’s invasion of ―OF ALL PLACES― Florida.

Statistically it is also the 2nd most spoken language in the land.

thanks to Puerto Rico, it’s the 2nd judicial and legislative language in the country. and thanks to the Puerto Rican amendment to the Civil Rights Act, voting ballots have to be multilingual.

so yeah, Spanish is USA’s 2nd official language

@futurebird

@blogdiva @futurebird My family has been speaking Spanish in Texas longer than the USA has existed.

@pawsplay @futurebird and Puerto Rico also existed before the USA, so yeah.

am not defending Spain, but it’s really something for these gringos de mierda to want to erase and re-write 500 years of European settler colonialism in the Américas.

@blogdiva @pawsplay

1. There is no official language in the USA. Although I don't want to remind them of this FACT at the moment.

2. Speaking English is easy mode in so many parts of the world. In the US IDK how anyone can complain. Center of the universe big head language.

Frankly if you speak English it can be hard to learn another language since people will switch and don't have patience for my Spanish (I cannot blame them, but I have a very nice accent I'm told.)

1. i know there’s no official language but there’s not one but two hegemonic languages: English and Spanish.

this was basically the whole basis for the Puerto Rican Amendment: our island isn’t a state, it’s an independent country annexed to USA by war, denied our right to our own citizenship yet given one by USA. so as long as PR is a territory and our people citizens, you can’t force them to only speak English to vote.

that amendment passed in ±1973.

🧵

@futurebird @pawsplay