Ugh. There should be a short test along with any license to make sure you can speak AND write in English half-decently.
I mean come on, honestly.
You kidding right??? So my dad when he came to Canada should have went to school for years before getting a drivers licence??? What does your ability to speak an write properly have to do with your ability to drive or ride???
By the way he still doesn't read English and he is fluent in Gringlish...
In a sense, yes that is what I am saying.
Keep in mind that nothing is ever black or white (GTAM'ers, please refrain from racial comments). If your father ran a business for a really long time, it sounds like it's safe to say that he is generally a smart enough person to use common sense. If he needed to post an ad to sell something, he would ask for help from you or someone else to write it for him. As you mentioned in previous posts above, if he needed directions he would ask you for specifics details for him to look for and he would use his head to figure out the rest.
I am very sorry to say but in this day and age, not a lot of people use their heads anymore.
Now in terms of immigrating to a country, yes I do believe that a person should learn the official language of that nation on a very basic level at the minimum.
I am very lucky to be perfectly bilingual (french and english) and because any touristic area in the world will accomodate english, I can pretty much visit any country.
Should I choose to permanently immigrate to a different country, I will definitely put an effort into learning the basics of their official language so that I can accomodate to how
they do things, rather than expecting them to cater to me and my english/french.
I am rather annoyed that in most major cities of Canada there are "towns" within towns of people who only stick to their culture and want nothing to do with English (or French for that matter since it is the other official language of Canada).
As someone mentioned, this doesn't contribute to the country at all. It's as if they are here to use our resources but don't want to be a part of the country. It's kind of annoying.
They start wanting to do things the way they are used to back home and rather than imposing our laws against them, the governments feel that it's easier to just change our laws to accomodate them and hope to get votes that way.
This is nothing against anyone specifically, including you rafiki911, I am just speaking on a general level.