Rafael Cruz Quotes

If you spend your time trying to learn English, you fall behind in your course content… I know because when I came here I could not speak English. So that was the idea of Congress when we passed bi-lingual education. But that was to only go on for a short time—one and one half years. But many of the bi-lingual education programs of today go on for year after year and they are destructive because the primary objective is to learn English.

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

They say that immigrants don’t speak English. So? Who cares. Even the Irish learned English after a while.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

Over 90 percent of parents in Puerto Rico want their children to be totally fluent in English.

I didn't move to Miami to live in a Spanish-speaking province.

When I first came to this country I could not speak English. Now I get paid to write it.

Growing up was very interesting for me. If you were Haitian, people just automatically assumed that English was a second language. So they had a special class for my brother and I, but we spoke proper English.

The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.

The English Language Amendment says above all, 'Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English. Let us not deny them the opportunity to participate in American life, so that they can go as far as their dreams and talents can take them.

You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.

Well, my first languages are German and Spanish because I was brought up by a Spanish mother and a German father, so I always spoke both languages at home. I'm very thankful that I was brought up in a bilingual house.

Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.

When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

Although an increasing proportion of the Hispanic population is foreign-born - about half of adults in this group - English proficiency is and should remain a requirement for citizenship.

Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'.

I grew up in a community that was bilingual. I've done it for a while, singing in both languages.

I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.

Rapid acquisition of English should be the paramount goal of any immigrant language instruction program.

[Referring to immigrants:] They're all over the place, and they don't speak English. Do we want more of this?