There is a big push among American conservatives to make English the "official" language of the United States. Behind this push is the controversy around illegal immigration, with Republicans such as Duncan Hunter wanting to build a giant wall along the US border with Mexico. The backlash to this immigration policy has been apparent this past week during President Bush's visit to Latin America (actually, immigration is just about the only issue where I agree with President Bush). Led by right-wing senators such as James "global-warming-is-a-myth" Imhofe, Congress is moving to declare English as the national language. Imhofe warns that hispanics are forming "linguistic ghettos" in many American communities. This reminds me of the evangelical minister in Texas who said that every American should speak only English since "English was good enough for Jesus."
The truth is that bilingualism is good for America and good for democracy. And anyone who has ever been to Miami or San Diego knows that that imposing an "English-only" policy is an impossible pipe dream. As Cristina Rodiguez suggests in her excellent essay in the current issue of Democracy, A Journal of Ideas, bilingualism promotes participation by Latinos and other immigrants in American institutions:
"In the end, we should regard confronting differences as essential to self and mutual understanding. Politics is not just about finding points of commonality and proceeding from them. It is also about challenging one another with our differences. The end result will be a society transformed, but that society will in fact be more coherent for having faced the differences in the population directly rather than having tried to suppress them with rules that posit a uniformity that does not exist. "
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