TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Archives
• Young Voices
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis

FEATURES

• Election 2008
• Road to Wealth
• Examining Hip-Hop

E-mail a friend

• TOPICS
• Immigration
• Politics

 

How will we know when our immigration policy has struck the right note? According to Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) in the Republican debate this past Tuesday, we will know that our immigration policy is right when we no longer hear the words "...for English press 1, for Spanish press 2."

Tancredo constantly asserts that the United States should not become multi-lingual. He believes that having one language is the key to holding a nation and its culture together. He is not alone in this belief. People have written into comments throughout the blogosphere asking, and even singing, for an English-only national policy.

I believe that Tancredo and his crowd have based their whole "one-language" idea on one wrong-headed argument. They believe that nations can only maintain their sense of nation-hood by all speaking the same language. That is just not how the world works. He constantly says that "bilingual countries don't work." Take a look at the long list of multi-lingual countries. Tancredo says that all of them - from Canada to Ghana - don't work. His idea is incorrect and a thin veil for his fear of things that are different than him.

Immigrant communities tend to place a high value on learning English for practical reasons anyway. So to me, the craze about making sure that people learn English seems pointless - people will learn English because it will help them live and thrive here and form relationships.

So should we be making laws that forbid public signs or instructions from being written in Spanish or Chinese? No. To ban other languages would make the USA lose that sense of cultural openness that is so key to our immigrant traditions.