We've been having a good discussion here in several posts about immigration and the anti-immigration demagoguery of the Republicans. The bottom line is that the Republicans will go to the wall to prevent any kind of effective enforcement action against employers that hire illegals. And all the rest becomes ultimately hot air without that - but a lot of people will still get hurt unnecessarily by some of them.
On the language thing, I'm a big advocate of people who immigrate here learning English. That doesn't mean they have to give up their native languages. Actually, I think it's kind of a shame when they do. But to function adequately living in America you need to know English. Mary Ellen pointed out some of the practical realities of that in her post about teaching English to immigrants.
But we need to be clear also about the nativist, bigoted impulse behind the "English-only" movement, which is relatively new in the US. (It was only within the last 15 years or so that it became prominent.) It's one thing to encourage immigrants to learn English and to try to make that opportunity available. It's another to demonize other languages as sinister and un-American. And that's exactly the impluse behing the hard right's complaints about Spanish. La zorra estadounidense Kathleen Parker trotted out a "respectable" and "Southern moderate" version of this in the column I linked earlier.
By the way, "la zorra estadounidense" means "the American bitch".
This article, from our last round of Republican nativism, gives some background on the "English-only" movement: Geoffrey Nunberg, "Lingo Jingo,"The American Prospect vol. 8 no. 33, July 1, 1997 - August 1, 1997. Nunberg writes:
Given the minor role that language has played in our historical self-conception, it isn't surprising that the current English-only movement began in the political margins, the brainchild of slightly flaky figures like Senator S.I. Hayakawa and John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist who co-founded the U.S. English organization as an outgrowth of his involvement in zero population growth and immigration restriction. (The term "English-only" was originally introduced by supporters of a 1984 California initiative opposing bilingual ballots, a stalking horse for other official-language measures. Leaders of the movement have since rejected the label, pointing out that they have no objection to the use of foreign languages in the home. But the phrase is a fair characterization of the goals of the movement so far as public life is concerned.)
Until recently, English-only was not a high priority for the establishment right. President Bush was opposed to the movement, and Barbara Bush once went so far as to describe it as "racist." [This is Barbara, the wife of Old Man Bush, not Barbara the not-Jenna of the twins.] And while a number of figures in the Republican leadership have been among the sponsors of official-language bills, most did not become vocal enthusiasts of the policy until the successes of English-only measures and of anti-immigrant initiatives like California's Proposition 187 persuaded them that anti-immigrant politics might have broad voter appeal. Senator Dole endorsed English-only in the 1996 presidential campaign, and Newt Gingrich recently described bilingualism as a menace to American civilization. (my emphasis)
And Newt Gingrich is a menace to healthy stomachs; listening to him very long would make nearly anyone want to urp.
Demonizing Spanish has been a way in which Republicans have used to mainstream ideas from the extremist right:
At the local level, the public discussion of English-only has encouraged numerous private acts of discrimination. In recent years, for example, dozens of firms and institutions have adopted English-only workplace rules that bar employees from using foreign languages even when speaking among themselves or when on breaks. [If the US had the labor laws it needs, stuff like that wouldn't even be considered.] More generally, the mere fact that politicians and the press are willing to take the proposals of English-only seriously tends to establish the basic premise of the movement: that there is a question about the continued status of English as the common language of American public discourse. In the end, the success of the movement should be measured not by the number of official-language statutes passed, but by its success in persuading people—including many who are unsympathetic to the English-only approach—to accept large parts of the English-only account of the situation of language in America. (my emphasis)
Are dark-skinned, dope-dealing Mexicans who cain't speak no English taking over the country? Not hardly:
But the English-only story is nonsense from beginning to end. Take, for starters, the claim that there are 32 million Americans who are not proficient in English. To see how wild that figure is, consider that the total number of foreign-born residents over five years old is only 18 million, some of them immigrants from other English-speaking countries and most of the rest speaking English well. The actual Census figure for residents over five who speak no English is only 1.9 million—proportionately only a quarter as high as it was in 1890, at the peak of the last great wave of immigration. And even if we include people who report speaking English "not well," the number of residents with limited English proficiency stands at around six million people in all. This is not a huge figure when you consider the extent of recent immigration and the difficulty that adults have in acquiring a new language, particularly when they are working in menial jobs that involve little regular contact with English speakers. (Or to put it another way: More than 97 percent of Americans speak English well, a level of linguistic homogeneity unsurpassed by any other large nation in history.) (my emphasis)
This is how phony a problem the alleged Spanish-language plague is:
What is more, recent immigrants are in fact learning English at a faster rate than any earlier generations of immigrants did - and by all the evidence, with at least as much enthusiasm. (my emphasis)
Oh, by the way, Spanish was supposed to be used as a language of government in the American Southwest:
The word "English" is found nowhere in the U.S. constitution, nor in any subsequent amendment. The issue of codifying a national tongue never even came up at the federal convention in Philadelphia in 1787. In fact, after the Mexican-American War, when California, New Mexico and other territories were ceded to the United States, politicians north and south of the Rio Grande agreed that Spanish, together with English, would become the language of government in the newly acquired lands: not one but two tongues. The promise was left unfulfilled and language rights for Spanish speakers, then a slight majority in the region, were totally ignored. (Hispanic USA by Ilan Stavans The American Prospect 09/21/93)
