I remember being more than a little surprised when I found out that Papi had been living in the US for 10, 15, or 20 years on average and obviously had not bothered to learn the language. Many were truck drivers, and while you don't need to know English to understand what a stop sign is telling you, it did make you wonder what aspects of the rules and regulations of the road they didn't fully comprehend because they couldn't speak the language. And if they couldn't speak the language, it made you wonder about assimilation and how much they knew about the place they were living in.

Thomas Jefferson? Que? Pearl Harbor? Que? The Bill of Rights? Que paso, hombre. //

If you can't be bothered to learn your host country's language, then there are probably a lot of other aspects of the culture that you're ignorant of as well. Like politics or current events, the former of which is downstream from the latter. And if you're unaware of such things, then either you're getting your information from family members (which will have a certain viewpoint) or Telemundo, which has its own slant. Neither of these is a great way to invest in your adopted homeland because you should be educating yourself, separating the wheat from the chaff, and arriving at your own conclusions. That contributes to a more informed and independent society rather than one that just accepts what it is told to accept.

Having a common language is like glue that binds a society. It holds it together and makes it strong, and it's one of the most durable adhesives in a culture. When you don't have a common language, you get tribalism. You get division. You get Balkanization. None of these bode well for what is supposed to have been a melting pot where all of the ingredients meld together and assimilate to become one people. Today, thanks to mass uncontrolled illegal immigration, we may never become what we once were. //

Diversity is great, but only if it adds to the culture instead of splitting it up.

Anyway, the diversity trope is getting so tiresome because if it doesn't put unity of purpose in line ahead of it, then we're going to diversify ourselves right out of a country.