So long as I am Village Mayor of Greenwich, NY, declaring English as the official language will never be put on a meeting agenda, let alone come up for a vote.
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Most, if not all, of the first wave of immigrants from a particular region or county, have faced discrimination and blatant bigotry. My father was raised in Lynn, Massachusetts, located just north of Boston, the heart of Irish America. Yet he could remember seeing signs in store windows in the 1920’s and ’30’s which read “Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply”.
Louisiana and most of the south-central United States was purchased from France. Florida was first settled by the Spanish. Alaska was purchased from Russia. California and most of the southwest was Spanish, then Mexican territory. Vermont and Texas were once sovereign nations. If anthropologists are correct, Native Americans first arrived here via a land-bridge from Siberia.
The economic prosperity of the South was built on the slave trade. It was immigrants from eastern Europe that staffed the steel mills of PIttsburgh. Anyone who has ever listened to “Prairie Home Companion” knows of the pervasive Scandinavian influence in Minnesota and Wisconsin. One of the most important events in our nation’s history, the building of the Trans-Continental Railroad, was built on the backs of Irish and Chinese immigrants.
We are one nation, composed of people from all over the world. Those who propose a one-language America, are not only ignorant of our nation’s history, they are disingenuous regarding our nation’s future.
I can’t help but wonder how many of the local elected officials pushing this issue have visited Quebec and asked English-speaking Quebecois what it’s like to live where French is the only official language.
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I live in Glens Falls and I see Denis Kucinich as my congressman. I see Bernie Sanders as my senator. I see Howie Hawkins as my Governor. But you, David, will always be my mayor!
I have no problem with designating an “official” language. I work in human resources at a non-profit behavioral health organization and believe strongly in non-discrimination, however, I believe it is foolish to think that we as a society can operate effectively and efficiently to grant equal opportunity to all when we must constantly scramble to endeavor to comply with every “official’ decree in any language an individual demands.
We do our best, and I believe do a very good job in assisting those who need our services regardless of their language, but it dissipates our endeavors to provide for the vast numbers of individuals who desperately need our services when we must blindly adhere to some administrative function to facilitate providing those services in every conceivable language known to man.
I believe we can and should do everything in our power to honor and respect those who do not speak English. But I do not believe it is in our best interests not to have an “official” language that we can point to to draw everyone together.
I believe just as strongly in a non-discrimination clause to go along with English as an “official” language.
. . . Provisions for alternative languages should be available wherever a substantial number of the population do not speak or understand English well, say 10-20%+ of the population … however, advances in computing technology should make all this moot within five years, I hope.
. . . Software exists now, and will be improved upon, to instantly translate spoken languages as well as printed text from one language to another. As databases are expanded, and voice-recognition is improved, and hand-held or pocket-sized computing devices become smaller and more powerful, many additional languages will be added and the “Babylon” effect will be no more.
. . . BTW, internationally, English is already the dominant language for sea-going and aviation commerce, even among ship-to-ship communications where neither ship is from an English-speaking country!
There were no signs in the ’30s in Lynn saying “Irish need not apply”. Anyway, why would you base your argument about English around the Irish since, presumably, they spoke English!
The whole hooey about “we are a nation of immigrants” is relied upon by sophists like yourself. The truth is, except for a small band of African Rift indigenes some 60,000 years ago, every country or locale is a nation of immigrants. Even “countries” in Africa are nations of immigrants. Anyway, if one accepts the premise that we are a nation of “immigrants” we are also a nation of Christians but you’re not likely to fight for that one.