'Our Country As A Disunited Polyglot or Maybe A Branch of Latin America?'
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (11/27/07)
Two events, one quite recent, epitomize the extent to which some American leaders are appealing to lawful and unlawful residents of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity to substitute even more extensive use of Spanish in lieu of English as our national language.
English has been the language of this country beginning with our earliest European immigration and continuing universally throughout our history. More Americans of European ancestry have some German blood than any other. Imagine our national divisiveness (to use that “in” noun) and lack of national identity if our German-speaking ancestors (including some of this writer’s) had insisted upon speaking German in lieu of English! Although in varying measures of population, think what would have occurred had all immigrants persisted in speaking their homeland language instead of English: Italian; Polish; the three Scandinavian languages and Finnish; Latvian and the other Balkan languages; Dutch/Flemish; Castellano Spanish; French; Portuguese; Russian, Czech and the other Central and Eastern European languages; Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Farsi and the other Northern and Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern languages; Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and the other Far Eastern and Southeast Asian languages; Bantu, Swahili and the other African languages; so on. We hardly would be the “United” States of America and would have made the disparate ethnics and nationalities of the Holy Roman Empire seem unitary by comparison.
In the United States House of Representatives there is a so-called Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In the best interests of those immigrants, lawful and unlawful, whom that informal group purports to assist, one would assume its principal purpose would be to facilitate integration, the indisputable sine qua non of which necessitates English proficiency. (Which goal, of course, would not denigrate the reality that more Americans, especially those working abroad, should be more linguistically proficient.) Unhappily, the goal appears to be the opposite - to promote more, and virtually pre-emptive, use of Spanish in lieu of English.
Thus, earlier this month a scarcely publicized rather fiery informal confrontation (between Democrats) occurred on the House of Representatives Floor. Several Caucus Members vehemently - some witnesses say, rudely - objected to a measure which if enacted might stimulate use of English at the workplace. The immediate legislative consequences are irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that too many leaders, disproportionately Democrats, are trying to promote even more prevalent use - often, mandatory - of Spanish instead of English. It may not be mere coincidence that some Mexican politicians speak of “Los Estados Unidos de Mexico” as a country of 133 million people, some 33 million of them in the United States of America (although there may be 43 million folk of Latin American ethnicity here).
The other episode occurred in September. New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson, ancestrally part Mexican, insisted upon campaigning in Spanish for President - not of Mexico, but of the United States. That an individual as competent and experienced as he would stoop to such a mixture of demagoguery and ethnic appeal is as unexpected as it is appalling. However, vastly more important, it manifests an attempt at further denationalizing of, and fragmenting, our national cohesion as the United States of America - immigrants from every linguistic polity, all except millions of (mostly Mexican) Latinos principally utilizing English.
Those who imminently suffer, and will suffer, the most inevitably are the immigrants who do not learn and utilize English. Their educational and employment opportunities have been, and will be, more limited. In the longer range, if universality of English is not achieved (by compulsion or otherwise) the United States of America will cease to be e pluribus unum.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
(Printer friendly version) 
Send Feedback
