“The gift of a common language is a priceless inheritance” - Winston Churchill
Those are the words of Sir Winston Churchill, and he could not have said it better. The gift of a common language is a priceless inheritance. And like any priceless inheritance, it has to be safeguarded and protected if it is going to be passed on to future generations.
Here in the United States we have special reason to pay close attention to those words. Because it is our common American language, English, and the ‘melting pot’ process it supports, that has made this country the most successful multi-ethnic nation in the history of the world.
Today, however, that priceless inheritance is in danger. It is under attack by those who stand to gain by dividing America into separate communities that do not share a common language, and have little in common except the same geographic location. Using the codeword ‘multiculturalism’ they preach a doctrine of linguistic apartheid.
That is why I am urging you to vote ‘Yes’ on Senate Bill 163 to let the people of Oklahoma decide the path they want to follow on this critical question. Do they want to embrace multilingualism and turn their back on the melting pot? Or do they want to join with the great majority of states – thirty to be exact – and make English the official language of state government operations?
I think we have an obligation to defend our common language and safeguard it as an inheritance for future generations of Americans. And I am convinced that one of the best ways – perhaps the only way – we can accomplish that is to make English our official language.However, you will hear from opponents who say we shouldn’t worry, that we are overreacting by taking this step. They say we’ve heard all this before and everything turned out well. But I say they are turning a blind eye to what is happening today. There are real warning-signs that our melting pot is breaking down.
In 1999 a Texas border town named El Cenizo adopted an ordinance making Spanish its official language. If you needed an English translation of city council business you had to ask for it in Spanish.[1] That was a proverbial “canary in the coal mine” as far as the need for official English goes. Now the federal government is suing the Salvation Army for requiring its employees to speak English on the job. The City of Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations charged the owner of a “Philly cheesesteak” take-out restaurant with “discrimination” for posting a sign asking his customers to please order in English. What kind of human relations can we have if we can’t communicate with each other?
Now we read that a public school in Tucson, Arizona is making kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish. I think the American people have good reason to think that the demand to accommodate other languages is getting out of hand, and that it is time to do something about it.
Speaking English is essential to the melting pot tradition that Americans have valued for generations. President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "We have one language here, and that is the English language, and we intend to see that the [assimilation] crucible turns our people out as Americans." But today our linguistic unity is under siege. The record influx of non-English speaking immigrants we have taken in recent years is threatening to overwhelm the assimilation process. And maintaining the incentives that must be in place if we are going to encourage those immigrants to acquire the English fluency they need to thrive and succeed in our society like generations of immigrants before them.
Last year we addressed the issue of illegal immigration, which we agreed we had to deter to the maximum extent we could under the law. This year we are trying to do something about legal immigration. This is to make sure that the record level of legal immigration we are experiencing will strengthen our country and not weaken it. And one of few ways we have to do that is to ensure that immigrants continue to have real incentives to learn English. We want to make it clear that if people are going to come here they have the same responsibility that generations of immigrants before them have had – to learn English and assimilate.
That’s what this bill, S.B. 163 does. It deals only with government speech and carefully defines official actions, so no one can say it will infringe on the private speech or actions of anyone, including government officials. It has common sense exceptions for protecting public health and safety, for teaching foreign languages, for promoting tourism and for many other reasons. It has provision for something that is very important to us in Oklahoma. S.B. 163 fully protects “the use, study, development, and encouragement of any Native American language, in any context, and for any purpose.” And it protects job opportunities for Oklahoma citizens who speak no other language but English.
Let me clarify that official English does not mean “English only.” None of the 30 states with official English laws prohibit government agencies from using other languages when there are legitimate public interest reasons for doing so. Those exceptions are provided for as I said. And the amendment says we can make any other exceptions that may be necessary by passing a law. Having English as the official language simply means that whenever the government acts officially, that is with legal authority, it must communicate its actions and intent in the English language. It means the language of record is English. And it means that no one has a right to government services in any other language unless our government decides that it is in our interest – the people of Oklahoma’s interest to provide it.
S.163 would eliminate multilingual driver’s license exams, multilingual state signs, and government agency telephone recordings in other languages. No longer would you have to press 1 for English. More importantly, no longer would the Oklahoma government be burdened with providing taxpayer funded services in any language other than English. This bill makes sense, not only to me, but to a majority of states, and to an overwhelming majority of Oklahomans.
Last month, the federal government began an investigation of whether the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety violated the civil rights of two Iranian immigrants by not having written driver’s license exams in Farsi, their native language. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched the investigation after the Iranians filed a complaint accusing the Department of discrimination based on their national origin. Since the couple did not understand English well enough to take the Oklahoma exam, according to the news report they went to Kansas and were able to pass an exam using only graphic symbols. They then returned to Oklahoma and exchanged their Kansas licenses for Oklahoma ones.
Now there are many things wrong with this story. For one thing, national origin is not the language you speak. It’s where you were born. Courts have repeatedly upheld that distinction. I can say “I speak Spanish” and no one can say with any certainty what my national origin is. Secondly, drivers who cannot read and understand English threaten the safety of all motorists, including themselves. If they cannot read traffic signs and directions, what are they doing on our roads? Federal regulations that govern motor carriers involved in interstate commerce require drivers to “read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.” If English is a safety requirement for drivers engaged in interstate commerce, shouldn’t we make it one in Oklahoma?
Now like other states we allow business visitors and tourists to drive on our roads. But we are not talking about people who drive on our roads 365 days a year. And more importantly, we have no reason to expect them to learn our language, adopt our civic institutions, and assimilate. Immigrants are something else entirely.
You have to wonder about that Iranian couple and people who say we don’t need to adopt official English. Did they think we spoke Farsi here when they chose to leave their country and immigrate to the United States? Where did they get the idea that they were entitled to have an Oklahoma driver’s license exam translated and written in Farsi? But here’s the real question, if we fail to make English our official language, what grounds do we really have to deny their request? That’s the issue the Department of Public Safety raised, as well as the huge cost and administrative burden of providing driver’s license exams in the 300 plus languages the Census Bureau says are spoken in the United States.
Why shouldn’t taxpayers have the right to protect themselves by avoiding the high costs and the high salaries of translators required to exist in a multilingual government? It’s time to bring our policy into conformity with practice. The day- to-day default language of all 50 state governments, their legislatures, courts, and executive branches, is English. It’s time to make it our official language too.
S.163 would let Oklahoma voters make that decision and put it in the state constitution. According to a national poll by the Winston Group in 2007, 87 percent of the American people support making English the official language. And a recent poll by the Tulsa World and KOTV-Channel 6 found that 88 percent of Oklahomans favor making English the official language of our state, including 93 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats. Those margins include majorities of every group. With an overwhelming majority of Americans favoring it and 30 states already adopting official English, why would any lawmaker oppose making English the official language?
This bill was introduced not to inhibit immigrants from receiving government services or to dissuade them from participating in the process, but to maintain critical incentives for immigrants to learn English. One of those most important reasons for doing so is to raise their skills and their income. That’s why I smile at those who argue that this is somehow going to hurt our state economically. Really? Census data shows that learning to speak English is a near guarantee that immigrants will increase their earning power. Success in Oklahoma and every other state rides on your level of English proficiency. And it will strengthen our economy, not weaken it, to make sure we provide incentives to learn English.
It is time for Oklahoma to join the majority of other states that have passed official English laws and begin to respond to the desire of an overwhelming majority of Oklahoma voters. We need to pull together under a common cause, a common sense of history, and a common language. The late, distinguished chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, reinforced the critical importance of preserving our unifying language in the midst of the record wave of immigration we are experiencing when she said, “Cultural and religious diversity does not pose a threat to the national interest as long as public policies insure civic unity.” “As long as public policies insure civic unity.” That’s what this is about. Insuring civic unity and making sure we can pass the priceless inheritance of a common language on to future generations of Americans. I respectfully urge my colleagues in the House, to respond to the will of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Oklahomans, and vote for S.B.163.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment