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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Don't the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws? Kinda crazy China took so long to stoop to our level
EDIT: I have since learned that public schools in the US are not required to teach in English, so you can cross the US off that list! My bad!
EDIT2: I just googled it, and it turns out it is required. Back on the list it goes!
EDIT3: I've had to explain multiple times in the comments that I'm not talking about teaching immigrants the local language, but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers. The US, Canada, Australia all arrived somewhere where there were already people, like Polynesians, Inuits, and Aboriginals, and in their public school, they're all taught in English. It's disheartening to see how little people think of the native population of these countries, and it shows how effective the native American genocide was.
Genuine question : why do requiring a earnest effort to learn the language of the country a bad thing?
There is a shit ton of bad things about our immigration laws, but forcing immigrants to learn the local language isn't one of them.
Language barriers isolate people and learning the local language helps reduce the isolation, benefiting everyone.
They didn't move there. They were conquered. That's called cultural genocide.
I actually don't think having a main language in a country and offering education in that language is a bad thing per se.
But I don't like hypocrisy, and if someone's upset at the Chinese for teaching in Mandarin I need them to be just as upset at Australia, Canada and the US for doing the exact same thing.
What hypocrisy?
The discussion conflates a lots of things. So to be clear :
We are talking about someone moving to a new country, not a country invading another country and forcing them to learn the new language to assimilate them.
We can be mad at China for annexing Tibet for example, forcing them to learn mandarin and forbidding them to talk to their native language.
But if I decide to go live in China, then it is not far fetched to expect me to learn mandarin, regardless of its history. It is two different things.
Context matters.
I live in Canada. Should we make real efforts to restitute Natives? Absolutely. Does that mean that we can't expect new immigrants to learn the current local language because of our past?
We can't change the past, but we can make better in the future and integrating new arrivants is necessary and beneficial for everyone.
I'm not talking about people moving to a new country at all. Polynesians didn't move to the US, the US invaded their land and forced them to learn a new language. And so on and so forth for the other settler colonies. I am not talking about immigration at all. There's a reason why I talk about the US, Canada, and Australia, and not for example Italy. They are settler colonies. They moved somewhere and then forced the locals to learn their language.
So folks getting upset about the Chinese teaching Uyghurs and Tibetans in Mandarin in schools should be just as upset at the Americans, Canadians, and Australians for teaching Polynesians, Inuit, and Aboriginals in English in their schools. I hope it's a bit clearer now, I'm not a great communicator, and I really cannot make the hypocrisy more obvious than this.
Other examples: Norwegians teaching Sami in Norwegian, the Portuguese teaching the locals in Brazil in Portuguese, the Spanish teaching the locals in Chile in Spanish, the English teaching the Maori in New Zealand in English, et cetera.
Nonexamples: the Dutch teaching Turkish immigrants in Dutch, the Germans teaching Moroccan immigrants in German, Italy teaching Slovenian immigrants in Italian, the US teaching Mexican immigrants in English, China teaching Indonesian immigrants in Mandarin. -- I am fine with all of these, full stop.
We can be both upset at what our ancestors and parents did and integrate new arrivant within the current state of the society they arrive in.
Both aren't exclusive. I get what you are saying, but I don't see that as hypocrisy.
And again, there is a distinction between integration and assimilation.
Holy shit you are so fucking dense. This has nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants. No one is talking about immigrants but you.
Your argument boils down to : If there is history of colonialism, requiring a basic level of the most spoken language is bad. Otherwise it's good.
Society at large has been multi-cultural for as long as human written history has existed through conquest, war and trade.
There is a possibility to require people to both learn the country's main language while keeping their culture. I live in a city where that happens on a daily basis and everyone is better for it.
Wrong. And obviously so. When I gave the US teaching Mexican immigrants in English as an example of something I'm completely ok with, what did you gather from that? Did you think "aw geeze, I guess this guy really hates it when America teaches Mexican immigrants in English"? Because that's a pretty dumb thing to think. When I tell you the sky is blue, do you think I really mean it's purple? There's no talking to you. You're doing this on purpose, you have to be
Yes, but all these countries have politicians who say they feel bad about it
It varies by state, but some do require instruction in English. While the US has no official language, most states have English as their official language, which impacts various policies. Schools are federally required to support the education of students learning English as a second language.
In Canada we don't legally force people to learn English. Legally the federal government MUST provide services in English AND French. Meanwhile, they also offer their many of their services in other languages depending on need and logistics.
Spanish speaking kids get an education too. It's not malicious. We're not all monsters here. Just half of us.
No, it's actually a very important point that there is no national language in the US.
And no, the EO from 2025 is not legally binding and is more symbolic than anything.
it doesn't but good luck dealing with any authority if you don't speak english or speak it with a foreign accent