When In Rome...

We received our new credit card in the mail recently because ours was nearing its expiration date.

(All Dave Ramsey followers... we didn't get rid of our card during Financial Peace University. Bruce and I each have our own card, with the same account, through one company. Our credit card is not, and never has been, a problem for us. We rarely use it, and we pay it off immediately when we do. The card company does not benefit from us being their customer. We use them; they don't use us.)

But this is not a post about credit card debt. This is a post about a pet peeve of mine.

When you get a new card, you have to call the company and activate the account. You must navigate through automated, voice-activated, irritating pre-recorded prompts. And I have grudgingly become accustomed to the prompt of various companies that speak briefly in Spanish, I assume asking the listener to push a 1 if they would like to hear the rest of the recording in Spanish. (I don't speak Spanish, so that's why it's an assumption.)

This time, I heard this version instead: "If you would like to hear this recording in English, please push 1."

I am an American. I live in the United States of America. Our native language is English. It should be a foregone conclusion that I want to activate my credit card while using the English language. If someone else needs special instruction beyond that, they should get the stupid prompt for preferential treatment.

Better yet, get rid of the prompts for foreign languages altogether and let people learn English when they live here.

I have strong opinions about this, most of which are generated from the family in which I was raised.

My mom is German. Born and bred in Germany. She met my dad, an Air Force sergeant, while he was stationed in Germany, and they married. While my dad lived in Germany, he learned the language. And when he brought his young bride back to the United States, she learned English. As a homemaker, my mom learned English at first largely by watching The Flintstones and The Price is Right.

When we children were older, mom went to work, in American companies, where the only language spoken was English. Nobody learned German to make things easier for my mom. There were no stickers in public offices written in her native language that gave her instruction on how to function in a land that was foreign to her.

My mom was not a university-educated professional when she came here. She wasn't much more than a teenager, raised in a tiny village in Germany that boasted only one factory where linens were made, one school, one church, one bakery and one Gasthaus (a combination Bed and Breakfast, pub and restaurant all in one.). A bus, much like our blood mobiles these days, would come to my mom's village from a nearby larger town every so often to meet the banking needs of the community. And those are the businesses I recall from visits when I was a girl, so I'm not even sure they were all there when my mother was being raised.

The point is, if my mom can do it, others can too. Moreover, they should.

This past Thanksgiving, I bought the audio recording of Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey. I wanted my kids to hear the real story, the whole story, about what the pilgrims went through to make a home in America. It's an excellent resource... and I learned as much as the kids did.

Those people suffered incredible hardships so they could worship freely. Death, near starvation, illness, severe cold, fear of the Indians. But they worked through those first years here and eventually flourished.

Those of us who have been born in this country owe gratitude to those early settlers. And to others who have worked for our various freedoms since then. Somewhere in our lineage someone worked to make things better for us.

If you are going to a new country to make a new life for yourself and your family, then by all means, make it. Don't take it.

I worked with a woman in Texas who was originally from Asia. She and her husband were both working toward their American citizenship. They had a little boy and wanted to raise him here, not back in their native land.

Sonya told me some of what she and her spouse went through to even take the test. It's expensive. They waited hours upon hours to even get inside the place where testing took place. They were turned away once because they waited in line all day, only to have the day pass and the office close. It was awful.

I also quizzed her during lunch breaks a couple of times on the questions that would be asked. Let me assure you that most native-born Americans, college-educated included, would not pass that test. I wouldn't have. It's tough.

They both eventually passed the test and became American citizens, because they worked hard. They'll pass on that gumption to their son. And not only will he be better for their efforts, but we as a society will be as well. They learned how to function here, in a land that was at first foreign to them, but is now home.

We have enough "pure bred" Americans born in this country who are lazy, uninspired, and quite content to be spoon fed and live off the system. We don't need to import more of the same. Those who are in the welfare system and successfully get out of it and go on to live productive lives, they work. Hard.

When our country panders to foreigners by allowing them to live here in a bubble but not forcing them to assimilate, we cheat ourselves from productive citizens, and we cheat those newcomers from ever developing self sufficiency. They become a burden to the rest of us, and we become their caretakers. And they pass on a sense of entitlement to their children.

It's disgusting.

I don't have all the solutions. I may not have many.

But it's not brain surgery to lower the cost of taking a test for citizenship (I do think they should still pay to take it though). And it's not rocket science to expect people living here to be able to order a hamburger at McDonald's in English.

Living in the land of the free, home of the brave, should not be free. Foreigners should be brave to take on the task and not scurry into our country asking us to scratch their bellies.