Here comes da judge

And he should your favorite judge, too. See the sentence he handed out to some criminal defendants, who also happened to be immigrants--one that will be good for them; my ancestors, when they came to America, had to learn English...I bet yours did, too:

Judge Peter Olszewski Jr. gave three criminal defendants a choice: learn English or spend 24 months in the Luzerne County, Pa., jail.

Olszewski issued the unusual sentence after four men pleaded guilty to robbery-related charges through a translator.

“Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” he asked during the plea hearing, according to The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

One of the defendants was already imprisoned on drug-related charges; the other three were given immediate parole. Those men, all resident aliens, are due back in court next year.

At that time, Olszewski says he’ll administer an English test. If they pass the test and prove they’ve earned GEDs and found full-time jobs, the judge says he’ll let them go about their lives.

“If they don’t pass, they’re going in for the 24 (months),” Olszewski says, according to the paper.

Speaking the language

Over at NRO, Mark Krikorian examines the results of a Pew Center poll on Hispanic immigrants and their use of English. The results are worrying. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, there was always one thing we could count on: that immigrants to this country would learn English. That might not be the case anymore, and it's not good for this country. The survey looks apparently at all Hispanic immigrants, not just illegals, but...imagine what the percentages below would look like for them:

The Pew Hispanic Center has released the results of a survey on Hispanic immigrant language use that is not as reassuring as they seem to think. (The report is here, with coverage by the L.A. Times and the WaPo.) They report, for instance, that 88-percent of American-born children of Hispanic immigrants speak English very well — that's nice, until you realize that it means that one out of eight doesn't speak English well. And even among the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants, 6-percent report that they don't speak English well and 19-percent that they don't read it well — these are the native-born children of native-born Americans whose immigrant ancestors arrived decades ago. Other disturbing findings: fully 28-percent of Hispanic immigrants never use English on the job, and only 29-percent report using more English than Spanish at work. And among naturalized citizens — people who are supposed to have passed a language test — 11-percent report that they speak no English at all, with 35-percent speaking just a little.