Should English Be the Official Language in the U.S.?

GUESTS: JIM BOULET, Jr., Executive Director, English First; JIM CRAWFORD, Author, “Hold Your Tongue – Bilingualism and the Politics of English Only”; Rep. TOBY ROTH (R WI)

BYLINE: CLAUDIO SANCHEZ

HIGHLIGHT: Six bills have been introduced into legislation, all by Republicans, to make English the official language of the U.S. Critics say the English-only campaign is the work anti-immigration bigots.

BODY:

DANIEL ZWERDLING, Host: Should English be the official language of the United States? This past week Congress began hearings on the question. Various legislators, all Republican, have introduced six different bills to make English the language of the land and, as NPR’s Claudio Sanchez tells us, there is probably more congressional and public support for the measure than ever.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, Reporter: No single organization or person is spearheading the English-only campaign but it does have some very dedicated soldiers. One of them is Jim Boulet, Jr.

JIM BOULET, Jr., Executive Director, English First: That’s Jim, J-I-M, B-as in boy, O-U-L-E-T. I’m with English First. I’m the executive director here. You know, when you’re talking about this issue you have to realize 98 percent of the American people agree with me.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Boulet, a short, stout fellow with light, almost transparent, green eyes and a hurried look about him, can hardly contain his excitement over the attention that the English-only issue is getting these days from presidential candidates, from Congress, or the media. One day Boulet is on NBC’s Today Show, the other on Japanese TV.

On Wednesday a House Education Subcommittee held a hearing on making English the official language of the United States. ‘This is important to Americans everywhere,’ says Boulet.

JIM BOULET, Jr.: If, when there are, like, phone calls from- from listeners, which there weren’t on The Today Show obviously, it’s amazing how many times someone will call in with English far better than mine and say, ‘I’m an immigrant and I agree with you.’

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Boulet says bilingual education has been a disaster. Bilingual balance, and government documents like drivers license tests printed in as many as 37 languages in some places, are a waste of money. America is coming apart, divided by race, ethnicity, and language, says Boulet, and the only way to bring us all together is to pass a law. Six have been drafted, but the best one of the bunch, says Boulet, was written by Representative Toby Roth, Republican of Wisconsin. Roth’s bill would repeal bilingual education, eliminate bilingual balance, and prohibit the U.S. government, its officers and employees, from communicating in any language other than English. It would also grant citizens the right to sue in civil court for injuries sustained by anyone who felt compelled or forced to read or hear a language other than English. It’s the only bill with teeth in it but, most importantly says Boulet, it has the interest of immigrants at heart.

JIM BOULET, Jr.: When California passed an official English law the government refused to enforce it. What happens? Proposition 187. Florida passed an English law in 1988. The government refused to enforce it. Now they want to do Prop. 187. If we address the common language question we can de-fang the anti-immigrant movement.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Dozens of people were at the hearing, most representing bilingual education groups, Latino political organizations, law firms, even the Mexican Embassy. Also waiting to get in was Jim Crawford [sp], author of Hold Your Tongue – Bilingualism and the Politics of English Only.

JIM CRAWFORD, Author, ‘Hold Your Tongue – Bilingualism and the Politics of English Only’: No one disagrees that immigrants need to learn English in the country. The point is how do you bring that about? Do you make their lives as difficult as possible by cutting off all the services that are now available to them or do you help them learn English by- by providing adequate funding for English classes? In Los Angeles these are- these English classes are going 24 hours a day and they still have 50,000 people on a waiting list to get in. These English-only bills do nothing to help those people learn English.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Crawford says there’s just no evidence that English is losing ground to other languages.

JIM CRAWFORD: Quite the reverse. All the statistical evidence shows that immigrants are learning English faster now than ever before in U.S. history. I think that the underlying intent of all these English-only bills is to restrict the use of all languages other than English because they offend some people and, unfortunately, they- they offend people who have bigoted feelings toward immigrants. I think that’s the bottom line in this debate.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: The hearing turned out to be surprisingly uneventful and dispassionate, with the exception of Congressman Roth.

Rep. TOBY ROTH (R-WI): Mr. Chairman, and members of this committee, I do feel that America today is breaking up into groups, and that’s why I’m so devoted and dedicated to this issue, because we can always- we can always take care of issues of the balanced budget, of other issues we vote on the floor, but if you allow this country to break up into linguistic groups, linguistic apartheid, no one can ever put it together again. Yes, we are the most diverse country in the world. We have no common ancestry, but we are one nation, one people. Why? Because we have a wonderful bond, the English language, and we’re losing that today and we’re losing it very quickly.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: ‘English must become the official language of the United States,’ Congressman Roth warned, ‘or we will cease being a nation.’ After the hearings, Jim Boulet felt good about what had happened.

JIM BOULET, Jr.: I leave with the sense that this is a sense forward. Generally legislation is not passed before there’s a committee hearing. This is the first committee hearing in- in years, so to have a hearing at all, and we’ve seen some positive things, some good data. I’m excited.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: One huge issue that the committee chose not to discuss, however, was bilingual education, the federal government’s oldest, most visible program dealing with language. The bilingual education office of the Department of Education isn’t very big but it does put the government stamp of approval on tens of thousands locally run education programs that Boulet and others in the English-only movement have targeted. Not just because they’re big or ineffective, they say, but because they involve the future – children. I’m Claudio Sanchez reporting.

The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distribution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.



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