Words and Music in the Immigration Debate

I am the president of a local retail and wholesale company that employs more than 150 first- or second-generation immigrants. I am proud to say that 148 of these employees thought that the company was important enough to them to show up for work Monday on a day of protest ["Boycott Gives Voice to Illegal Workers; The Day's Impact on Economy Unclear," front page, May 2]. My employees showed that they understand how to strive legally for the American dream by helping to build a small business into a larger one through everyone pulling together.

If we could close our borders to illegal immigrants, the people here legally would be able to find work -- many at a better rate of pay. Many companies employ illegal immigrants because they can pay them lower wages. It might cost these companies more in higher wages if they had to hire legal workers, but it also would lower the huge amounts of taxes our government uses to support illegal immigrants.

CARL LEVIN

Lorton

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Robert J. Samuelson's April 20 op-ed column, "Conspiracy Against Assimilation," failed to mention a major obstacle to Latino assimilation in the United States: increasing bilingualism, which leads Spanish-speaking immigrants to conclude, "Why bother to learn English, when everything is in Spanish?"

This trend benefits employers who want to continue to pay minimum wages to non-English speakers, keeping them in a kind of perpetual near-peonage. The immigrants thus are ill-served by bilingualism.

The first thing I would tell any Latino immigrant is, Sin inglés, siempre pobre -- Without English, always poor.

Bilingualism also adds unnecessarily to the cost of doing business by requiring the use of two languages. Further, it harms not only immigrants, but our national unity. Just look at Belgium for a disturbing example of bilingualism's effect on national unity.