And the Democrats fire back.
From Fox News Latino:
“Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress on Wednesday presented the nine principles that should guide comprehensive immigration reform they say will contribute to the economic recovery.
During a press conference in the Capitol, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus insisted that immigration reform is cannot [sic] be postponed any longer, adding that during the 113th Congress is the perfect time to bring undocumented foreign residents out of the shadows. …
The nine principles put forward Wednesday include the registration of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants; protection of immigrant families to prevent their separation; legalization of undocumented students and visas for agricultural guestworkers.
To register, undocumented people would have to provide their fingerprints, pay taxes and learn English, although those who have criminal records will be subject to deportation.”
The caucus members were asked why they didn’t simply present their own immigration bill in response to the Republican-backed Achieve Act introduced by Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona — both of whom are leaving Congress in January — to which Senator Menendez likened the set of principles to beginning a debate by offering “an extended hand.”
There’s nothing surprising or otherwise out of the ordinary in the Democratic principles put forth on Wednesday. Anyone who’s paid any attention to the immigration debate, which has intensified in the past several years, knew beforehand exactly where the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Democratic Party as a whole stood on immigration reform.
The “learn English” clause is also nothing new and has been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike for at least a decade and a half. For conservatives, it’s important that new Americans assimilate into the mainstream culture. Most Republicans, and probably many Democrats as well, believe America really is a melting pot, but it’s the immigrants and minorities who must melt into what’s perceived to be America’s core traditions — that means learning to speak the dominant language, the language the settlers spoke, the language the Founding Fathers spoke and every president has spoken since: English.
And therein lies the danger. By insisting that newcomers learn English — one of about 380 languages spoken in the United States — we risk narrowing the definition of what it means to be an American instead of broadening it.
There are those, like the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who believe that telling immigrants that they must learn English if they want a legal right to live in this country is at most a harmless concession to conservative demands. It’s only natural, they reason, that citizens and residents should learn the language of the land. In France they speak French, in Germany they speak German, and in America everyone should speak American.
You might’ve laughed just know when I suggested immigrants in America should learn to speak American, because of course, there is no American language. Ah! Now you get my point.
English is the dominant language in America not by right, but by might. The people who first settled this land — or invaded it and stole it away from the natives living here — were English speakers. The people who set up its government were English speakers too. (Interestingly enough, while they gave enough thought to construct the most revolutionary experiment in representative government in the history of humankind, they didn’t think adding a measly language requirement was necessary.)
The people who subsequently came here from all over the world took it upon themselves to learn English, because English is the language of our schools and our economy. When Mexicans living in the newly-conquered Southwest were granted U.S. citizenship in the mid-1800s, no language requirement was demanded of them. Same for the Puerto Ricans conquered half a century later. It was just assumed that these people would learn English, and for the most part, they did.
But now that America has entered into a period of Latinization, now that Spanish is the second-most dominant language in the United States and growing, it’s suddenly imperative that immigrants learn English.
It’s a culture war. The same Americans who want to keep the country predominantly English-speaking are the very same who want to keep it predominantly white and Christian. They believe that’s what America was founded as, that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it should remain.
Nonetheless, many Americans understand the country to be no more English-speaking than it is white or Protestant. America was founded on a set of principles, nothing more and nothing less. Those principles are liberty, equality and self-government, and you don’t have to speak a specific language or belong to a specific ethnic group or church to understand them and believe in them.
I hope that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus scraps the English requirement, because it’s not in keeping with the virtues that make America great and that are the reason our forefathers came to this country from Latin America however long ago.