Symphonious

Just browsing stuff and came across a list of requirements to become a US Citizen. One of them is:

you must demonstrate an elementary level of English (reading, writing, understanding);

Is this right? I always tend to question legal advice from random websites, and this one seems to have the entire purpose of getting you to find a lawyer using their site…

If this is right, how is this different from the extremely controversial, and now removed, White Australia Policy? Finally, is it really the case that every American immigrant speaks english? That would suggest to me that there’d be effectively noone in the US that didn’t speak English as I’d imagine someone born in the US would pick up enough over their lifetime to speak at least “elementary english”. There’s still a few exceptions - people born in the US and moved overseas at an early age etc - but that would be an extremely small percentage of the population I’d imagine.

Any Americans want to shed some light on this?

A couple of interesting articles I stumbled across today that the lawyerish types (both professional and armchair) might be interested in:

Firstly from Radio Australia:

Under the new laws, migration lawyers, instead of their clients, will be personally liable for the cost of cases that have no merit.

Billing the prosecution for cases that have no merit sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure if the lawyer should be billed or not. If the lawyer pressured their client into the lawsuit then the lawyer should definitely be slapped with the cost. However, if the lawyer was a good lawyer who acted in good faith and advised their client as accurately as they could about the chances of winning then it would seem quite unreasonable to slap the lawyer with the fine.

I would hate to think that people wouldn’t be able to find a lawyer to take their case just because there was a possibility it would be thrown out as having no merit. Then again, how obviously invalid does a case have to be before a judge throws it out without listening to the arguments?

And secondly, from the Financial Times, it appears that it is illegal (in the UK at least) to have unsafe sex with someone and not inform them of any STDs you may happen to have, but the jury must be asked to consider whether or not the victim consented to it (I’m not sure if “it” should be taken as the sex, the unsafe sex or contracting the disease). My interpretation of that may well be out though.

The article is about how the original ruling that found him guilty was overturned because the jury should have been asked to consider “the issue of consent”. I’m not sure if that means the entire trial happens over again as if it had never happened or if “the issue of consent” is being sent back to trial. Anyone got any hints as to how this process works? References to Law and Order episodes I can watch to come up to speed on it are appreciated….

Demazin is a wonder drug as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been sniffling and struggling to breathe all week until today I gave up and went to the chemist to get something, anything, to make it stop. He gave me Demazin and some 7 hours later I’m still breathing easy (it only claims to work for 6 hours).

Of course, from about the 5 hour mark it seems to make you very drowsy so I’m very much considering just crawling into bed and going to sleep even though it’s now only 4:30 in the afternoon.