Rep. R.D. “Bobby” Guerra wrote recently about the need in Texas for bilingual education and many legislative proposals to accomplish this. I’d like to offer my perspective.
When I was 15, my sister was 11 and our little brother was 9, our father decided we should learn Spanish and moved the family to the interior of Mexico where we were enrolled directly into the local Mexican schools. We were told to sit there, smile and, of course, pass the school year. We did. No further instruction.
Dad knew it would work because he grew up in Pennsylvania during the 1930s when every day a new child entered class, coming from Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland etc. They sat there, smiled and soon were speaking English. No special treatment, just immersion. Young people can do that.
My first job was substitute teaching a large first grade class at a Catholic school in Brownsville. Almost all the children were from Matamoros and spoke no English. I was instructed to never speak Spanish to them, not in class and not at recess. How else were they going to learn English? Once again, at the end of the year we had a classroom of English-speaking children.
Bilingual education is expensive and hasn’t really seemed to work. Maybe try immersion.
Audrey Martin
Edinburg
Officials
attacked
Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas need to be impeached and removed over their mishandling of our immigration system and to restore some sanity regarding illegal immigration.
All you Democrats disparaging Republicans by labeling them as “far right” Republicans, I think maybe you mean “right so far” Republicans. You were warned that Biden would open our southern border and allow unfettered illegal immigration to slowly destroy our communities. You loudly disagreed when it was called an invasion. But we all saw those videos recently that showed waves of people rushing our border. Truly an invasion.
It’s gotten so bad that even self-proclaimed “sanctuary cities” like New York City are re-thinking that designation. The New York City mayor wants to quickly undo their sacred “sanctuary city” designation after a flood of illegal immigrants started costing the city more than $8 million per day for housing.
Remember when Donald Trump wanted $5 billion to finish the wall? Democrats said no, but yet gifted more than $700 billion to other countries. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Hard-working American taxpayers are sick of carrying the burden for everyone else. The politicians should stop all the anti-work welfare incentives for able-bodied citizens and our schools and healthcare facilities with illegal aliens. A recent report stated that almost 5 million illegal aliens have crossed our borders since President Biden took office. Five million in two years!
When millions of men, women and children actually get trafficked from around the world across our southern border illegally because of Biden’s policies, the Democrats are silent. But when the Texas governor started busing them to Democrat cities, the Democrats then decried it as “human-trafficking.” Hoo-boy! These people are very disingenuous and intolerable.
Joel Ramirez
Edinburg
LETTERS — Limit letters to 300 words; all letters are subject to editing. Mail: P.O. Box 3267, McAllen, TX78502-3267; Email: [email protected]
