Diversionary Tactics

Divisive In Any Language

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006; A17

Yes, let's talk about the English language and how important it is that immigrants and their children learn it.

And please permit me to be personal about an issue that is equally personal to the tens of millions of Americans who remember their immigrant roots.

My late father was born in the United States, and grew up in French Canadian neighborhoods in and around New Bedford, Mass. When he started school, he spoke English with a heavy accent. A first-grade teacher mercilessly made fun of his command of the language.

My dad would have none of this and proceeded to relearn English, with some help from a generous friend named James Radcliffe who, in turn, asked my dad to teach him French. My dad came to speak flawless, accent-free English. He and my mom insisted that their children speak our nation's language clearly, and without grammatical errors.

None of this caused my parents to turn against their French heritage. On the contrary, my sister and I were taught French before we were taught English because my parents took pride in the language of our forebears and knew that speaking more than one language would be a useful skill.

My mom would give free French lessons at our Catholic parochial school to any kid who wanted to take them. When we were young, we'd visit our cousins on a farm in Quebec during the summer, partly to improve our French. (And Parisian French elitists take note: I still love the much-derided accent of the Quebec countryside, which many have compared to the English of the Tennessee mountains.) I tell you all this by way of explaining why I can't stand the demagoguery directed against immigrants who speak languages other than English. Raging against them shows little understanding of how new immigrants struggle to become loyal Americans who love their country -- and come to love the English language.

As it considered the immigration bill last week, the Senate passed an utterly useless amendment sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) declaring English to be our "national language" and calling for a government role in "preserving and enhancing" the place of English.

There is no point to this amendment except to say to members of our currently large Spanish-speaking population that they will be legally and formally disrespected in a way that earlier generations of immigrants from -- this is just a partial list -- Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, France, Hungary, Greece, China, Japan, Finland, Lithuania, Lebanon, Syria, Bohemia, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia were not.

E.J. is essentially correct, but he misses the subtext. The whole immigration/English debate has nothing to do with identifying and fixing an actual problem, like, for example, the number of US adults who are functionally illiterate in any language (more than 44 million last time I checked.) This is all election year politics and the curious twisting in the Republican party as they try to find issues which both energize their base while simultaneously trying to attract Hispanic voters. What they seem to have going on here is the 21st century equivalent of the Southern Strategy, instead.