New Mexico...jurors no need to speak english...or even spanish..

again, this country is going so a$$-backwards. How in hell do you expect communication..



The Albuquerque Journal reported that the state's Constitution "shall never be restricted, abridged or impaired on account of … (the) inability to speak, read or write the English or Spanish languages."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/1...ico-court-says/?test=latestnews#ixzz2bs5B3vCn

 

they probably shouldn't be able to vote either, huh?

 

These citizens have assimilated very well...

I'm sure New Mexico prints biliingual ballots at very little expense to the tax payer. Bravo!!!

 

nope...ugh meant yup...agree...correct....

 

Two things:

1. The attournys have every opportunity to exercise pre-emptory challenges during voir dire to keep such people off juries. And they have multiple opportunities to raise the issue leading up to and during the trial. This case was one in which the defense team tried to raise the issue on appeal after failing to take advantage of any of those chances.

2. Setting aside the fact that the very name 'New Mexico' pretty well puts parties on notice that there are people who spoke Spanish there for hundreds of years before the place became US soil there are also a lot of people there who speak a variety of native american languages. They number in the hundreds of thousands. They, too were there long before US territoriality. In their case, some 14,000 years or so.
Are these people to be denied full citizenship because they didn't leave when New Mexico became part of the US?
It's a very small thing to accomodate them as jurors and may, for instance in cases between Spanish or Navajo speakers, allow the jurors to better understand the case than mono-lingual English speakers.

Some flexibility is well applied here.

 

KS, agree to #1...but as far as number 2...I said english OR spanish...the constitution says the jurors do not need to be able to SPEAK, READ or WRITE..hell how do they survive not being able to do ANY of these?

 

I thought to become a US citizen as an immigrant you had to know how to speak English. Is that not the case?

 

Visit me in the ER I work in and I'll show you how. They know how to use their government issued insurance cards.

 

Kanto,

You are a student of history. You know very well what happens to a country when diversity runs amok.

 

Pretty sure none of the jurors were born there 14,000 years ago. Pretty sure none of the jurors were born before 1912 when New Mexico became a state.

You'd think after 100 years of statehood and 160 years as a US territory that "New Mexicans" might have assimilated into the US by now.

 

Who cares if they're citizens, literate, able to think or reason? Let on the juries, elect them to office, whatever. Sheila Jackson Lee is doing fine.

That's the direction the country is headed, why get in the way with intelligence?

 

Not a clue. On the other hand, we allow people from Appalachia who speak some dialect of Olde English with no comprehension that the written word exists to serve on juries. I'm not sure there's a difference.

 

It's different when the country comes to you vs you going to the country.

 

Among other things, the vitality of the society skyrockets beyond the dead hand of Tradition in mono-cultural societies. (see: Saudi Arabia vs. Malaysia or North America vs. Europe or USA vs Japan)
It no doubt presents some challenges, but the opportunities far outweigh the costs, in my opinion.

Here's a nice anecdote for you. I attended a wedding over the weekend. It was between a pretty standard ScotsIrishEnglish heritage young man and a Vietnamese heritage young woman. In OKC. Not a lot of English in the older generation....but the younger generation cousin who was doing the EmmCee'ing couldn't stumble through her bit in Vietnamese but spoke Okie fluent English. We have less to worry about than might be supposed.

 

Robert Putnam, a well known scholar; Harvard Professor of Public Policy, did a very exhaustive study on diversity. His findings were that diversity destroys neighborhoods, making people less involved, less likely to volunteer, vote, on and on. Putnam himself was pro-diversity, and surprised by his own findings.

Of course this guy is only looking at what actually happens, not blinding preaching the PC Pollyanna BS that everyone is conditioned to either spout or repeat. Why deny that people tend to thrive in similar and familiar surroundings?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full

 

India vs. Pakistan

Same people, ethnically. Same people culturally until approximately 1,000 a.d.

Now India is a multicultural, swirling pot of chaos. And Pakistan is a nice, centrally controlled mono-cultural nation defined in identity by faith and ethnicity.

Which one has the perking economy? Which one has a vibrant society? Where would you rather live?

Game, set, match.

Seriously, I'll be happy to debate Putnam with you but would suggest that we both sit down and read both his findings and those of his critics before you do so. A Boston Globe article is not highly compelling as source material. What I have heard about Putnam's work is that his time scales, choice of locales and causation were open to question. But those were comments from a Chicago U guy, so maybe he's biased.

 

Well how would India fare vs a monocultural country like...say...Japan?

 

Right, I've got no interest in ever setting foot in India, except he's already claimed victory for himself based on his own opinions. And without looking at what is happening in our country.

Here, I think we've all seen the negative effects of diversity as were cited in the Putnam article. Now Putnam probably has opinions of his own, its just that he has the resume to suggest he may know what he's talking about.

This opening paragraph from his Wikipedia bio lays it out pretty good. Its just each person's outlook and interpretation regarding the US that determines whether or not you agree:


Robert David Putnam (born January 9, 1941,[1] in Rochester, New York) is a political scientist and professor of public policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also visiting professor and director of the Manchester Graduate Summer Programme in Social Change, University of Manchester (UK). Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous (and controversial) work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences.

 

It always appeared to me to be a bit desperate to claim victory on one of your own posts......

You could look at the old USSR's breakup to see how well multi culturalism worked out in some cases...I'm not saying multiculturalism is all bad mind you but just check how well muslim immigrants are appreciated NOW in europe...hell even the French are bitching about illegals.

 

again, the NM constitution, from what I read, says the jurors do NOT NEED TO SPEAK, READ, or WRITE....