Reply #5: When I went to school in the 1970s, I only spoke English with my friends

[RagingInMiami]

Even though we were all mostly Hispanic. But we always heard Spanish at home, so it wasn't like we didn't understand it or could not speak it. We just preferred English.

It's all about assimilation and it's happened countless times over the centuries, which is why I can't comprehend this fear of immigration and this drive to make English the official language. There is no need to pass a law because the children of immigrants will be Americanized.

My mom learned to speak English -- with a heavy accent that she never lost -- so I would speak to her in English and she would speak to me in Spanish or in English. And we would fly down to Colombia every summer when I was growing up, so I always spoke Spanish down there.

In 1980, the Mariel boat lift brought 125,000 Cuban refugees to Miami in a two-month period, changing Miami overnight. Where before, the Hispanic kids were Americanized, all of a sudden, all the Cubans kids in school did not speak English.

My school was impacted tremendously because I grew up in a Cuban neighborhood where many of the refugees settled. So where before, Spanish was only spoken inside the homes of Miami, it suddenly became spoken on the streets. Everywhere.

So even though I prefer to speak English, I never lost Spanish because it was always around me, and many times, I would be forced to speak Spanish because the other person could not speak English. This is just something I took for granted growing up down here.

It wasn't until I moved to the Southwest that I realized what a benefit it is to know Spanish because there were many Hispanic people there that did not know a single word of Spanish.