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Fill in the blank in the following sentence: The official language of the United States of America is _____. If you said English, you're absolutely wrong.
by F.R. Duplantier
One of the difficulties one encounters in trying to drum up support for legislation to make English the official language of the United States is the widespread belief among Americans that English already is our official language. "Well, of course, it's our official language," our countrymen respond incredulously when solicited for support. "What else but English could it be?"
What else, indeed! And there's the problem. The fact that English is the native tongue of American citizens has been so obvious to so many people for so long that no one ever saw the need to make it "official." Nor would there be any need to do so now, were it not for the fact that various demagogues, moneygrubbers, and change agents have recognized this oversight as a golden opportunity.
These self-appointed friends of the foreigner have taken the preposterous position that immigrants and their offspring have a right to participate in American society before they learn the language we speak. To do that, of course, they must have materials and services provided to them in their own language, at taxpayer expense. Never mind that the desire to participate is what motivates most newcomers to learn English, and that making participation possible in their language will remove the motivation to learn ours. Never mind that the longer their mastery of English is delayed, the less chance they will ever have of entering the mainstream of American life. Never mind that this counterproductive pandering will cost billions of dollars.
Never mind all that, because the fate of strangers in a strange land is not what concerns their champions after all. No, what concerns these doting do-gooders is the tremendous potential for financial and political gain inherent in multilingualism. Bilingual education, for instance, is big business. The Federal Government will spend $240 million on it this year, but that's just the beginning. The cost to states and localities of this unfunded mandate will exceed $8 billion. There's lots of money to be made in the bilingual publication of electoral ballots and government documents, too. Los Angeles alone spent nearly $300,000 in 1994 to print ballots in six languages: Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Korean.
The potential for political profit may be even greater. Voters isolated by their inability to speak English are voters easily manipulated. Blocs of unassimilated immigrants are the perfect foils for socialist sympathizers, at home and abroad, who can achieve their ends only by pitting the interests of one group of Americans against those of another.
But enough is enough. More than 20 states have already passed laws making English their official language, and several bills have been introduced into Congress with that same objective. Representative Toby Roth's "Official language Act of 1995," to name just one, would ban bilingual ballots and bilingual education. If legislation is now necessary to make explicit what Americans have always taken for granted, then legislation we shall have.
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