English Only

By: Nathan Hansen
Contributing Writer

Minnesota has joined the list of states that want to set as law the idea that English should be the only spoken language in America. As a result, immigrants, international students, refugees, and others who live, work, and try to move forward in their quest to become naturalized citizens of the United States will be hampered, persecuted, and shunned.                                                             
The issue of whether or not English should be the official language of Minnesota has received a lot of attention in the last 12 months. During the summer, Lino Lakes, a suburb of Saint Paul passed an English-only ordinance. Last summer while on a visit to Iowa and in order to boost his popularity among the tea party and other conservatives, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said that Minnesota should adopt English as the official and only language for the state.                                                                                                                                                                   
This idea is deeply offensive to our immigrant and refugee history and pride. Both sides of my family immigrated here in the late 1800s and early 1900s neither side of my family knew English when they first came here.However the intent of measures like this is clear—unless you already know English, you are not as welcome here as those who do.                                                                 
Some days I wonder if Lady Liberty oxidized and corroded not from the salt spray of the ocean but from the tears she must have cried when no one was watching as the ideals she came to represent were resented and forgotten.                                                                                                                                                                                     
“Give me your sick, your huddled masses yearning for liberty” seems to have now become “Give me the educated, the doctors, the best and brightest, those who already have a good life, and only those who know English already.”                                                                                                                                                                               
Doctors, lawyers, engineers, researchers already have a life infinitely freer and more fulfilling than their contemporaries in other countries due to their education and higher income than their neighbors; yet these are the only people we seem to want in America. Those who have truly suffered, starved, survived illness, violence, and war, are too poor and needy for us to give a damn. We call them wetbacks and other derogatory terms and tell our legislators and police officers to find ways to send them back to their country of origin.                                                                                 
Yet many of us sipping our lattes, checking our Blackberry, and shopping for designer clothes are the descendents of flea-infested, uneducated, poor Italians, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, and dozens of other nationalities who came here for the small chance of escaping famine, poverty, illness, and war. Should we have found ways to imprison them and send them back to their country?

Reading a Pioneer Press commentary by Rubén Rosario on the issue, I was directed to the work of Joe Salmons, the head of the German department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In a recent study he conducted and analyzed, he debunked the myth and assumption that European immigrants quickly assimilated and became ‘ideal’ Americans.
Analyzing old census data and other historical documents, Salmons and another colleague at the university concluded in their study of the German immigration experience in Wisconsin that many immigrants and their descendants remained monolingual, decades after immigration had ceased.

“Understanding this history can help inform contemporary debates about language and immigration and help dismantle the myth that successful immigrant groups of yesterday owed their prosperity to an immediate, voluntary shift to English,” Salmons wrote.
Wisconsin and Minnesota being very similar states ethnically, I am confident that Dr. Salmons would have found the same phenomenon had he studied the German experience in Minnesota. So the question that remains is what is the real intended effect of this legislation? Intimidation and the shunning of the immigrant and refugee population we see in our generation, which is mainly of Asian and Hispanic ethnicity.

I know this sends up red flags to all you conservatives, but I spent a summer in China learning and working at China Agricultural University through an internship program that the World Food Prize Program and its founder Dr. Norman Borlaug set up. The program was to show and teach young Americans what was being done to fight world hunger around the world.

Even in a repressive communist country (and China’s government is in many ways repressive) other languages were present on public signs, public forms, and other printed works of the government. China knew that there was a large amount of foreign visitors, immigrants, and workers who knew English and that it would benefit the nation and the people who were there to have both Chinese and English printings of important documents.

People wonder why China is such an economic powerhouse. It may have something to do with China’s ability to work with and maintain positive relations with many of the nations of the world and accommodate their business in ways we don’t with our Eurocentric English-only stance on everything.

Getting rid of Spanish instructions (plus the four other languages we use for the driving test and other public forms and examinations) does nothing to stop illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants don’t and should not be able to fill out public forms. And illegal immigrants still are exempt under the current law anyway, since the law exempts criminal defendants and victims of crime. That means court interpreters and the printing of documents in the native tongue and other such remedies to ensure due process.

Legal immigrants, refugees, student learners and workers do fill out public forms and have to fill out public forms in order to move forward and comply with federal, state, and local laws. Those are the people who will be punished the most by this law.

Legal immigrants, refugees, students, and other foreigners here legally will be the people who hurt and suffer when they cannot get a driving permit or fill out a form documenting their work toward becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States.

We go out of our way to make road signs understandable to the illiterate.  Drazkowski and his bill however singles outs immigrants, refugees and others just beginning to learn English. This is ludicrous and shows how much contempt we have for those who come here from another country.

One of the most laughable things to come out of this legislation is the fact that the bill would not require state agencies or the state to change any motto that is not in English. Because ironically the state motto of Minnesota is not in English: L’Etoile du nord is French. And our own state and many of the cities borrowed heavily from Native American tongues, the French, and Eastern Europe.

Representative Steve Drazkowski, David Hancock, Sondra Erickson, and Roger Crawford introduced the English-only bill HF64 on Jan. 10. Call your state representative and let them know that you do not support the English-only bill, and that the legislation runs counter to the fact that Minnesota was the melting pot of French, German, Norwegian, English, and Native American cultures.

[Editor’s Note: This issue is nothing new to HPR readers. For past commentary on the English Only legislation initiatives in Minnesota, check out our August 4, 2010 editorial: http://hpr1.com/opinion/article/see_no_evil_speak_no_spanish/ ]

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