The Homa Files

Let’s connect a couple of dots today …

In case you missed it, abrasive Trump policy wonk Stephen Miller got into a heated exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Miller was briefing the press on President Trump’s RAISE Act, which would move critical skills immigrants to the head of the line and require that immigrants learn English before they come to the United States.

Acosta challenged the English language requirement and asked:

“Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?”

Miller’s response:

“I have to honestly say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English”.

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The 2nd dot:

I’m into infographics these days and, earlier this week, a friend sent me a great one.

Initially, I was just intrigued by the infograhic’s structure and style.

Suddenly, its content has taken on a higher relevance.

Below is a the featured component of the infographic — a cool pie chart that proportionately depicts the “world’s most spoken languages”.

English is the modestly sized yellow section in the top left corner.

Point to CNN’s Acosta, right?

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Not so fast, mes amis.

Let’s look at a couple of other parts of the full  infographic ….

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Yep, English is modestly proportioned in the pie chart —  largely thanks to a couple of billion Chinese.

But, the infographic’s authors also slice the data in a couple of other ways:

English is spoken in more countries than any other language … Arabic and French are far back in 2nd and 3rd places.

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Still another cut:

English is the “most popular language being learned around the world.”

English’s 1.5 billion “learners” is more than 10 times the sum of the next 4 most popular languages.

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So, the pool of priority immigrants would come from over 100 countries … and number at least 1.5 billion.

That doesn’t strike me as so restrictive that Lady Liberty would lose any sleep over it.

Sorry, Jim … you should have glanced at this infographic before relegating English to Great Britain and Australia.

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P.S.  Do you know which is the international aviation language spoken by all pilots and air traffic controllers?

You got it: English.

And, the last time your call got routed to a call center on the other side of the world., how were you greeted?

Probably: “Hi, my name is Joe”

English !

Case closed.

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Thanks to MES for feeding the infographic.

To see the full infographic,  click here.

To see the exchange between Stephen Miller and Jin Acosta, click here.

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This entry was posted on August 3, 2017 at 6:59 am and is filed under Immigration, Language, Language - dialects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.