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Se Hable Ingles?
That’s what Alan Stewart Carl is asking today, given the pointless “English is America’s language” bills the Senate passed yesterday. And that’s right. They actually passed two bills on this.
Find out more here.
9 Responses to “Se Hable Ingles?”
And thank goodness they did. English should be our national language — for official business and in our schools.
As opposed to now? When we used English for business and schools?
This is nothing but immigration hoop jumping and pandering to some political base or to jump on an issue to gain votes (on both sides). If people speak spanish, or any other language, they’re going to speak it no matter what the “official” language is.
I wonder if this will end up generating any type of back lash to public use of foreign language use?
I live in San Francisco, and on my absentee voters ballot, there’s about 8 or more lanuages on it, so now it should/will be only in English? My grandmother speaks about 200 words of English, but is a citizen, does that mean she can’t vote anymore, or has to have someone translate it for her? Or just not bother voting at all?
Can’t wait for the useless gay marrige admendment and flag burning bills to come up in the fall for more political nothingness.
My grandmother struggled with the language while she made a new life and family in the US. At the same time, she was bidding good-bye to six of her sons as they left to fight in different armed services during WWII.
Traveling on a packed train to see one of the boys off she was ridiculed for her rudimentary english as she stood in the aisle for mile after mile. A returning soldier got up, pointed out the six stars pinned to her jacket to her tormentors and offered her his seat. Dad was in the Pacific at the time this happened but he choked up every time he told that story and my, how he loved to tell a story!
Ten American citizens, six servicemen and combat veterans, a life of worship and work. Those were the contributions of a German immigrant whose english would never have passed muster with the far right voters who are being courted with these silly damn laws “enforcing” the primacy of the english language in the US.
In other countries people impoverish themselves to get into language classes and learn the language which, world-over is an entry to better jobs and a better life. Dog-tired migrant workers get themselves to language classes after working ten hour days at impossibly difficult jobs. Language aptitudes are, like math abilities, unevenly distributed. They don’t determine the strength of an individual’s committment to this country.
In 2004 it was gay bashing. This year it’s Mexican bashing. The GOP is led by a bunch of bigots. I hope they lose BIG in November!
Heaven forbid that people who come to live in our country should learn and use our language. That is just asking way too much. Of course, when it is asking too much that they come to the country legally, then anything we ask is too much, isn’t it?
I just don’t see what making English the “official” language does? If you want to get ahead in this country, you have to learn English. I don’t think anybody doesn’t realize that. Here in Chicago there are thousands of Polish people who immigrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s and still don’t know English. They’re stuck in low-end jobs. The Polish immigrants who learned English are doing well. Same goes for the Mexican community (which is HUGE in Chicago).
I understand the emotional impulses behind the English-only issue. I lived in Miami for many years, and in Miami there are people who’ve lived in the US for 30+ years and still don’t speak English. It’s about impossible to get a job in Miami unless you’re bilingual. And, yes, I often felt like an interloper in my own country.
However: Miami is a special case, because most of the Spanish-only people are Cuban refugees. They’ve been treated with kid gloves because they’re political trophies: anti-Castro Cubans. They’ve been allowed, if not encouraged, to turn Miami into a de facto Latin American city.
A national English-only law is idiotic. It makes no sense: how will it be enforced? Will non-English speaking people no longer have court-appointed interpreters during trials? Will public service announcements and signs no longer be in two or more languages? Will non-English radio and TV channels be outlawed? What provisions have been made to enable non-English speakers to learn English? Do the new laws mandate and fund more ESL classes?
I agree that long-time residents and new citizens should learn to speak English. But it’s insane to say that, until they do, they should be unable to communicate with teachers, police officers, fire fighters, court officials, realtors, doctors, and dentists. That’s just punitive.
This is a strange issue. In one way, I agree that English needs to be our official language; otherwise we could become like Canada where the French-speaking provinces are constantly trying to separate themselves from the English ones. We don’t want a Balkanized state, and its expensive and impractical to provide every service in two or more languages.
On the other hand, the timing and mean-spiritedness behind this bothers me. There are alot of right wingers who, tired of the messy nuances of this issue, would love to round up all the illegal immigrants and bus them all back to Mexico. It seems like they can be exploited here if they stay, or go home and be exploited there. At least if they stay here and learn English, they will assimilate.
The bill placates those who are afraid of the Spanish language bogeyman and doesn’t hurt Spanish speakers, so I think it’s a net positive.