Monday, March 14, 2011

Xenophobic much?

Incredible. GOP not even trying to hide their hatred of "the other" at all anymore. In fact, obviously terrified by the ever increasing demands for "conservative" purity coming from the Tea Party crazies, they're ramping it up to the max.
Republicans in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would declare English the official language of the United States and require the development of English language testing guidelines for those applying for U.S. citizenship.

The English Language Unity Act would set out a new chapter in U.S. code that imposes an obligation on U.S. officials to "preserve and enhance the role of English as the official language of the Federal Government."
And does this sound like an actual government takeover of private policy to you?
The bill also says English language requirements and workplace policies in the public and private sectors "shall be presumptively consistent with the Laws of the United States."
But this is my favorite part:
"We need to encourage assimilation of all legal immigrants in each generation," said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the House sponsor of H.R. 997, the companion bill. "A nation divided by language cannot pull together as effectively as a people."
Tell that to the millions of first generation Italian, German, Polish, Asian and other immigrants who still don't have command of the English language after three generations of residency. Make proficiency a condition of employment and you might as well shut down every Chinatown district in America.

But that's really who they're targeting here, is it? Como se dice, mi casa es su casa en ingles?

Labels: , , ,

Bookmark and Share

4 Comments:

Blogger : smintheus :: said...

A pathetically incoherent bill. I love the part about requiring citizenship applicants to understand the meaning of the Constitution - including presumably the part that goes "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech".

And an open-ended, ill-defining requirement for all officials to "preserve and enhance the role of English"? What could that involve?

Anyway, willing to bet these clowns cannot find a way to define in legal terms what the English language is. Whose dictionary/grammar book? No foreign terms/phrases permitted? A legal morass.

2:18:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Just a dog whistle to all those xenophobes who are always bitching about press one for English phone trees.

8:00:00 AM  
Blogger TDC said...

Libby Spencer wrote in part "Tell that to the millions of first generation Italian, German, Polish, Asian and other immigrants who still don't have command of the English language after three generations of residency."

Just curious..do you have any credible, factual evidence to support the above claim?

9:42:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

Oh Lord, please keep the laughs coming.

I think it was a joke about the linguistic abilities of our most passionate politicians, but go ahead and stay up all night looking for websites and tabulating figures to "refudiate" it. Don't let me stop you.

I think the last Republican with a sense of humor was Lincoln, but of course they'd never let him on board today -- or Reagan or Eisenhower for that matter, the damn effete Commie liberal weenies.

For what it's worth, Democrats are no better and Journalists are the worst of all, but it's a funny comment just the same.

3:50:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home