I'm trying to understand the distinction between "Americans" and "non-English speaking" or why the two would be mutually exclusive. I also find it interesting that some of these workers have "worked for more than 25 years" and still do not know our language. There's simply no excuse for that. There are numerous resources available here to help recent arrivals pick up our language. If I moved to China and spent nearly three decades working there, my employer would reasonably expect me to have a decent command of Cantonese or Mandarin. It's funny how the US has so many people from other countries pouring into it but does little to encourage them to assimilate. Yeah yeah, the immigrants supposedly have a good "work ethic." Too bad they don't place a premium on being able to communicate with me in my own tongue while standing on my native soil, especially the ones who work in customer service jobs or otherwise deal with the public. As to the guy who tried to hire only blacks, I'd say he deserved exactly what he got, the racist jerk. Funny how it's never "discrimination" when minorities do it.

For that matter, I hope ICE raids every one of the people who wrote in to Larry's column today, and deports every last "immigrant worker" who is found to be in this country illegally. I notice not one of them said a word about making sure to only hire immigrant workers who have their papers in order.

Two things are being mixed up here. One is culture, the other is illegal immigration.

I managed a professional office in a large city. We hired college graduates, many with advanced degrees. All employees were legal.

We had both good and bad employees who were citizens and the same was true for people from other cultures. However, problem employees seemed to have different problems based on culture. And most of the good employees were immigrants (they spoke excellent English, by the way.)

American problem employees tended to be lazy. They wanted to be the boss from the first day and wouldn't take direction, even for simple, obvious things like not chewing gum in front of clients. A few stole. Some were obviously only interested in working long enough to be eligible for unemployment benefits. Some were chronically late, some overtly defiant.

Non-native employees could be problems in other ways, but seldom those ways. Some were too passive to get along in a professional environment--they had to be supervised constantly. Some expected their employer to solve their personal problems. Others were overly dependent on computers to give them pat answers without having to think.

Almost all our successful foreign employees became citizens, and we were proud to sponsor them.

After thirty years, I have to say--I do think many Americans have an unfortunate attitude toward work. So do a few foreigners, but the entitlement attitude is a real problem for employers in this country, and we'd be a lot better off if our culture learned better.