The Brits are right: Speak English!

Los Angeles Times ^ | August 15, 2005 | Carol Platt Liebau

[RWR8189]

THE LONDON terrorist attacks on July 7 and July 21 changed British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He had long been reluctant to make the fight against Islamo-fascist terror a domestic issue. Last week he outlined security measures to deal with radical clerics who incite violence.

Many of Blair's proposals would be unconstitutional under U.S. law. For example, the British could deport a person for "fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs or justifying or validating such violence"; "condoning or glorying terrorism" would be illegal under proposed anti-terrorism legislation; and organizations suspected of fomenting hatred would be controlled.

Of particular interest is a measure that reads in part: "It is now necessary, in order to acquire British citizenship, that people attend a citizenship ceremony [and] swear allegiance to the country." That's not much different from U.S. law. But Blair wants to impose an additional requirement: To become a British citizen, one must "have a rudimentary grasp of the English language."

This requirement would violate Section 203 of the U.S. Voting Rights Act, which requires that bilingual election materials and assistance be made available when a foreign language reaches critical mass in the general population. For example, California recall ballots in Los Angeles County were printed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Tagalog. The intent of Section 203 is laudable: A member of a "language minority group" should face no obstacles in exercising the franchise. But its effects are pernicious.

U.S. law, in effect, tells new citizens that they can be fully engaged in U.S. democracy without understanding the language of its election campaigns. It further suggests that secondhand knowledge of politics, through translation or others' interpretations, is an adequate substitute for the ability to hear and read about the candidates and the issues.

Naturalized citizens must demonstrate

[Virginia Queen]

No, have not.

[HuronMan]

That reminds me of when I worked as an office boy in an architectural firm in Detroit. One of the new architects, an Australian, asked me to go to the store a pick up a box of rubbers for him.

[Glyndwr4Cymru]

A young American man enroles at Magdalen College, Oxford, and on his first afternoon, as he innocently explores the university, he stops a lecturer and asks "Where's the library at?" The lecturer gives him a withering look, and pronounces "Young man, here at Magdalen one does not end one's sentences with prepositions." The American ponders this briefly, then brightly replies "Okay, where's the library at, asshole?"