Thread: Push for official English expands

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... sh-ON.html

Push for official English expands

Wendy Koch
USA Today
Oct. 9, 2006 08:27 AM


Rising concern over immigration has prompted a wave of cities and states this year to try to make English the official language.

A ballot measure is pending in Arizona, and related bills have passed the houses in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Michigan; the state senates have not taken them up. At least five cities and towns have approved ordinances; nine others are considering them. The U.S. Senate included a provision in a pending immigration bill. Gubernatorial candidates in Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona and Idaho have debated the idea.

"This is the most action we've seen in about 10 years," says Rob Toonkel of U.S. English, a group promoting English as the official language. "People are split on immigration. But on matters of assimilation, they agree immigrants should be on the road to learning English." If immigrants don't learn the language soon after arrival, he says, many never will. advertisement




"We make it easy for people to come (to the U.S.) and never speak English," says Louis Barletta, mayor of Hazleton, Pa., which passed an English-only ordinance last month. "We think we're helping them, but we're not." He says the measures are not anti-immigrant.

Critics disagree. "They're a way of putting immigrants in their place," says Ruben Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine. He co-wrote a study that found third-generation Americans of any ethnicity are rarely fluent in their ancestors' native tongue. What's threatened isn't English, he says, but Spanish.

Proposals vary but generally say government business must be conducted in English, with exceptions for emergency services. Federal law requires that election information be available in other languages.

"People know the key to getting ahead in this country is learning English," says John Trasvina, interim president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which opposes the official-English measures. He says they deprive people of the right to information about things such as prenatal classes and patient billing records in a language they understand.

Trasvina says Congress' inability to pass immigration changes led last year to creation of the Minutemen, private individuals who patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, and to the surge in English-only proposals. He says they have caused divisive community debates. Such proposals have been rejected in Kennewick, Wash.; Arcadia, Wis.; Avon Park, Fla.; and Clarksville, Tenn.

Some measures, several of which also set penalties for people who hire or rent to undocumented immigrants, have been challenged in court. Last month, an English referendum sought by Mayor Steve Lonegan of Bogota, N.J., died after the Bergen County clerk said Bogota had no authority to set an official language and the state Supreme Court declined to intervene.

English proposals have passed this year in Hazleton, Hazle Township and Shenandoah, Pa.; Valley Park, Mo.; and Landis, N.C. Measures are pending in Nashville; Newton, N.J.; Mint Hill, N.C.; Bridgeport, Pa.; Taneytown, Md.; Farmer's Branch, Texas; Carpentersville, Ill.; Escondido, Calif.; and Cape Coral, Fla.

Twenty-seven states already have laws making English their official language. According to the Census Bureau, eight in 10 U.S. residents speak only English.

This has to be done. If not than they we will slowly become a bilingual country. This is what they want. In Canada when it became bilingual it became very favorable for the French. When any government job came up where you had to be bilingual, it was always given to a French Canadian and most often from the province of Quebec. The Hispanics want the same privilege here. If they get it than not only will Americans be screwed but also some Hispanic groups as there is discrimination between some groups. One I have seen is that Cubans discriminate against Mexicans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans because they consider them uneducated peasants. There was actually an article in the Miami Herald business section on the various Hispanic groups who discriminate against other Hispanics.
We don't need to be discriminated against in our own country.

Assimilation and learning English is the key. If you want to be American you must learn ENGLISH.

Here is a quote from the below article that was put up on the board this morning that all legal American citizens would agree on.


http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/16/Tampa ... ps_ch.shtm

[/quote]“We did it, and all the Italian people … did the same thing,” said Maida, a World War II veteran. “They had their culture, but they spoke English.”[quote]

You can keep your culture, but you must speak English and melt into America.