Posted on 11/22/2002 3:20:37 PM PST by Joe Hadenuf
The Mexican Consulate in Indianapolis will be open for business Monday. It's an office that will serve a group of people that's growing rapidly in our city and state. Mayor Bart Peterson's office has worked for about two years with the Mexican government and the state of Indiana to get this consulate opened.
You don't have to look hard to see why the consulate is needed. Drive down Washington Street a few miles west of downtown, and you'll see the fruits of our Hispanic and Latino community's labor. Shop after shop, sign after sign in Spanish. There are now some 34,000 Latinos and Hispanics in Indianapolis, and 60% of them are Mexican.
"We have an education system that welcomes the immigrants and we like the way we are treated because we find that the American community is welcoming in general," said Roberto Curci, La Guia Magazine.
The city even has two publications geared toward this growing community. "The Voice of Indiana," a bilingual newspaper and "The Guide of Indianapolis," a magazine for Hispanics and Latinos. There's even a new Hispanic and Latino yellow pages.
Local businesses are forging ties with that community. Kroger just donated a van to the Hispanic Center of Indianapolis to thank them for translation help that the center has provided for the grocery chain.
"As we change and we are changing as a city, I think it was important for business to recognize that and we have recognized it," said Jeff Golc, Kroger.
The change will continue. Just ask the woman who helps run the grocery store on West Washington Street. New Hispanic and Latino customers come in for her authentic products all the time.
"Like once in a while there will be somebody new that comes. You know, like, "Oh, we just moved here and we came to see how it is." So yeah, we always get new people that come here," said Irasema Delgado, store manager.
The Mexican Consulate will serve three states: Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. It will serve as the Mexican government's primary link with those states on issues such as immigration, trade and economic development.
I am a strong believer in requiring all imigrants to learn English, but the Mexicans are hardly the first to retain their native language as long as possible.
There was a lot of German settlement in central Texas in the 1840s, when Texas was an independant Republic. As late as the 1960s, after 120 years, most of the older generation could not speak English.
The Cajuns in South Louisiana spoke "Cajun French" for 200 years, until forced to learn English after WW II.
The point is that no group has willingly given up their native language. They have all been coerced into speaking English and we are gonna have to wake up and coerce Hispanic immigrants to do the same.
So9
Our neighbors are from Venezuela, with family living in Cincy, Indianapolis, Florida and the their mom rotates living with each-as well as her sister. They are GREAT PEOPLE. Two have become citizens.
Problem is-immigration should follow up with classes in citizenship (very important) and the important fact that english is our language, our bond, and just as legal immigrants from years past learned english, so should they. The coddling-just like bilingual teaching in elmemtary schools flopped-making second class citizens out of millions of children-so will a cultural coddling cause a slow, if ever, true blending of these people into our society. Not to mention the unfair tax burden on all tax payers, immigrants included, of this trend to offer everything in the language of the immigrant.
We have truckloads of mexican workers at most village pantrys-like 7/11's, waiting for work opportunity in the mornings.
The near west side (and the near east side, which also has a fair number of Hispanics) were run-down, dangerous neighborhoods. The Hispanics have fixed up the property and are improving the areas. The groceries serve the immigrant workers like those who work with my son, who are LEGAL and go home for two-three months each winter.
The policy of the city is to welcome LEGAL immigrants, and I can assure you that someone running a grocery store is a legal immigrant.
I took a couple of days off business a few weeks back and visited. Going back with the rental car I drove around Indy a while. About 10 years ago I spent the day in downtown Indy and was really pleased with what's happened there. What I saw on the west side was impressive in it's own right. Oddly enough, their English is easier to understand then what used to be spoken in those areas.
There are a lot of neighborhoods in many cities I visit that sure could use this kind of community activism.
Welcome aboard Indiana, the open border, government sponsored, immigration "free for all, and this national security nightmare. It'll get better, wait and see. Bet the rent, honey.
My relatives back in Indiana keep bit*ching, and I tell them to shut up and enjoy the Tortilla chips.....Yummy!
By the way, I don't believe you ever mentioned relatives from Indiana before, when you were mocking all of us Midwesterners and telling us what a paradise California is, during the California power crisis.
Oh, and thanks for the laughs Ms. Marple. We are now, all assured........
Thanks for corroborating my story. You are quite right.
A couple of years ago I had a part-time evening job which required me to cut through neighborhoods on the near East Side. Quite a difference in the comfort level I felt, since the streets in warm weather were full of families, young couples, people working on their cars, etc. Those neighborhoods used to be full of drug dealers.
Well, they HAVE improved the community, and I don't care much what anyone says. They don't live here; I do.
The difference is that there's never in U.S. history been a large-population immigrant group, with heavy daily influx from an adjoining non-English-speaking homeland, colonizing a huge contiguous region of the U.S.
That's why reconquista cannot be in any way analogized to Poles in Detroit, Jews in NYC, or even Little Havana in Miami.
LOL! There is a lot of things I have never mentioned. One being I have lots of family in Ohio, Indiana and other places.
Californians mocking Midwesterners? LOL!
Lets see, it's Joe against hundreds........
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