Posted on 04/18/2005 6:06:28 PM PDT by Dashing Dasher
The ways we deal with language UNION-TRIBUNE
April 17, 2005
Take a look at how individual states handle the combustible language issue – including the English-only movement – and pretty soon you end up with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: In Illinois, a state-funded, multiyear effort to help legal permanent residents learn English directs them toward English-as-a-second-language courses. The purpose of the New Americans Initiative is to help foreigners become U.S. citizens by, among other things, helping them fulfill the requirement to speak English as a condition of citizenship.
The bad: In Arizona, the Legislature is poised to declare English the "official language" of the state. The state House of Representatives has approved a bill that would make English the official language of all government documents and require that voting materials be printed only in English. If the bill makes it through the state Senate, the issue will go before voters on the 2006 ballot.
The ugly: In West Virginia, lawmakers recently voted to make English the official language of the state – without even realizing it. It wasn't until the legislative session was over that legislators discovered that an amendment had been quietly slipped into a bill that had nothing to do with language. This was the handiwork of Senate Majority Whip Billy Wayne Bailey. The Democrat claims he was simply trying to clarify the manner in which official documents are produced.
Illinois is on the right track. Arizona is on the wrong track. And West Virginia is obviously way off track.
Like so many trends, this all started here in California. In 1986, voters approved Proposition 63 declaring English the state's official language. Other states soon followed, including Arkansas, Mississippi, Colorado, Florida, Wyoming, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina and Arizona. To date, about two dozen states have made English their official language.
In my book, that's two dozen too many. It's not that I believe immigrants and other newcomers shouldn't learn English when they come to the United States. They absolutely should.
They should learn English for their own good and for the good of their children because doing so will bring them more opportunities and speed up their arrival in the mainstream.
These days, that doesn't seem to be happening as often as it should. Part of the blame lies with "innovations" such as bilingual education and Spanish-language marketing efforts, which have created a linguistic cocoon where people think they can get along fine without speaking a word of English.
But that doesn't mean we should resort to coercion, loyalty oaths and other acts of government intrusion to force people to learn English. Americans have been down that road before, and it wasn't worth the bumps along the way. The country's first experiment with the English-only debate was aimed at German immigrants living in states such as Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. At the time, the issue was driven by a xenophobic fear of the cultural differences that immigrants bring with them to this country. The thinking was that if only the newcomers could be "Americanized," there would be peace and harmony.
Those who support official English laws sometimes try to draw a distinction between their cause and the English-only movement. But it's a distinction without much of a difference. If the scope of a bill or ballot measure is limited to government documents, then that's one thing. But what happens if a bilingual social worker or precinct volunteer is asked to explain or clarify written material to someone who doesn't speak English, and they do so in a language other than English, does that violate the statute? If so, the statute would seem to violate the First Amendment by infringing on the right to communicate.
Those were the grounds on which a state court in Arizona struck down Proposition 106, a ballot initiative approved by Arizona voters in 1988. Not content to treat the measure as a symbolic gesture as other states had, Arizona tried to enforce compliance. That suggested the goal was not merely to encourage the speaking of English but also prohibit the speaking of any other language. And that, the court said, violated the First Amendment.
Now Arizonans are at it again. Apparently, they didn't learn their lesson. But why should that surprise us? Take the long view of American history, and it becomes obvious – they're not the only ones.
Navarrette can be reached via e-mail at ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.
In the State of California, we voted in 1986 to have English as our Official Language (seems silly and redundant - doesn't it!) However, our DRIVING TEST comes in 96 languages. I can't even name 96 languages!
How many languages does our ballot come in? This is getting out of hand....
When my family LEGALLY came here, we forced ourselves to learn English - without an accent - we WANTED to be Americans! We took PRIDE in being American and speaking English!
Why has this changed!
They even forgot they weren't Germans originally. It's created all sorts of difficulty in setting up that family branch's genealogy.
When they came "here" they adopted German?
Where is here?
If it's USA - why German?
from where are you and your family.
Russia
The things Americans don't know about their own country would fill a basin as big as the Pacific.
In the mid-1600s you had your Dutch in New York speaking 35 different dialects, and the French everywhere North of the Ohio. The Spanish were just West of the Appalachians, and there were Indian tribes all over the place.
Then there were the English ~ a pitiful people barely able to eke out a living, and reduced to raising such Indian crops as tobacco and marijuana.
Newcomers missed all that.
In those days it didn't belong to anyone!
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