Oral Practice: The us Immigrants Ex. I. How much do you know about immigration in the u.S.? Answer the following questions.
When did the first immigrants arrive after the first colonists settled down?
What are the biggest ethnic groups in the U.S.?
What is a green card?
Ex. II. Read the text and say what facts were new to you. One Million Immigrants a Year Flock to the us
America is experiencing the second great tidal wave of immigration in its history, literally changing the country's face before its very eyes.
Today more than 28 million immigrants – legal and illegal – now live in the US, three times as many as only 30 years ago. Their number is growing by 1.2 million a year, and now accounts for more than 10 percent of the population.
Most Americans think of immigration as a problem that has come to the fore in the last half century or so. And when they think of immigrants they think of olive-skinned Italians or bearded Jews or Polish peasant women with bright shawls coming down the gangplank on to Ellis island. They do not think of the Pilgrim Fathers or the French Huguenots or the Scots Irish.
In those days the “native stock” descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers looked down on the olive-skinned Italians. Today the latter look with suspicious disdain on the Chinese, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Indians, Haitians and the rest as they flood into America.
The urban black underclass, meanwhile, look resentfully at everyone, as one new group after another threatens to vault over them in the scramble up the economic ladder.
Americans themselves are ambivalent about immigration. They know full well the contributions made by the Einsteins and the Enrico Fermis, they understand that the issues of green cards to tens of thousands of computer specialists from the Indian subcontinent is vital if America is to retain its lead in information technology.
The foreign restaurants all are universally appreciated addition to national life.
But Americans are as unwilling as Europeans to admit that without immigrants many public and private services could not function.
Many of today’s immigrants will become US citizens.
Their motives are the same as those that brought their predecessors to Ellis Island a century ago: escape from war, famine, persecution and poverty, the desire to give their children a better life.
For the newcomers the goal is that stirring occasion, a US nationalization ceremony.
Britain confers citizenship in a Whitehall brown paper envelope and a pro-forma warning to “keep this document in a safe place because it cannot be replaced”.
America summons its fortunate “petitioners” to a special federal courtroom to watch a uniformed military detachment present the colors. There follows much rousing speechifying, and then the Oath of Citizenship.
Typically 100 people will take the Oath, from 35 or 40 different nations.
Ex. III. Role-play the following game: one of the students is a US immigrant. The rest are interviewing him on:
Life standard in his/her community
Cultural shock
The government assistance programmes
Jobs available
Learning English
Homesickness
Audition: America On-line
Ex. I. Listen to the text and complete the sentences below:
America Online is…
It offers … channels, covering topics such as…
Members can obtain up to … per account.
Other features include…
Standard account cost … for … access.
Ex. II. Listen again and check.
Unit XI
Part I
Ex. I. Find the suitable word for "multinational" in your native language. Which multinationals are active in your area?
Ex. II. Read and translate the text in class. Write down the economic terms unknown to you.
A Voice for the Multinationals
It's become popular in recent years to bang on bigness as though it were inherently "bad".
But, in the words of the old Gershwin tune, "It ain't necessarily so". To prove it, we would like to explode a few myths about big American companies with foreign interests.
Let's look at some of the facts:
America's multinational corporations are the biggest contributors to the plus-side of the U.S. economy,'
From 1989 to 1991, exports accounted for approximately 90 percent of U.S. real economic growth, and American multinationals generated about two-thirds of those exports.
As America continues to struggle with a deep trade deficit, America's multinationals have a hefty and growing trade surplus.
American companies that invest overseas the most also export the most. It stands to reason: most of their foreign operations rely on American components, services and technology. Where investment leads, trade will follow.
Over 90 percent of sales by American-owned manufacturers in foreign countries, excluding Canada, goes to markets outside the U.S. And those foreign operations are largely financed by their own earnings, not by windfalls from their U.S. parents.
In fact, a great deal of what is not reinvested by those foreign affiliates finds its way back to this country.
What does all this mean for American jobs? Many American multinationals may have had to lay off workers because of declining revenues, or lagging productivity. But not because they're moving jobs overseas.
On the contrary, American multinationals and their growing trade surpluses create American jobs. Every billion dollars in manufactured exports creates more than 14,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
Manufactured exports also stimulate job creation in trade, service, transportation and other sectors.
Globalization is the ticket to the future, particularly as overseas markets continue to grow at higher rates than our own.