No Hablo Inglés

I don't really want to cover the national language amendment issue, at least not in this post. It's been said that such an amendment would be purely symbolic, and/or could be divisive ("In 1980, Miami-Dade county approved an English-only ordinance... But thirteen years later, it was unanimously repealed after policy makers determined it had only served to divide the community."1). Really all I have to say about a national language amendment is, it's not all about you, Mr./Ms. English-speaking American. (shrug)

But there's another language issue - some folks seem to think that if you don't speak English, you don't deserve to obtain any of our public or social services. Or that people who work in the service industry shouldn't have to learn to speak even the least bit of Spanish. I think people who feel that way need to travel a little bit... the farther the better. To go places where people aren't like them, to see how some cities, even in the U.S., manage to do the "melting pot" thing at a whole 'nother level than you'd ever get here in the Midwest.

If you travel, or otherwise pay attention to the whole wide world (which we're all guilty of forgetting to do from time to time, but hey...), you'll notice that while most of the people you talk to speak your language, most of the people in the world probably don't. Here's a list of the most spoken languages in the world according to the Ethnologue, a widely cited reference for languages around the world. According to this, more people speak Spanish than English. And more people speak Mandarin Chinese than English and Spanish combined.

"But I'm not talking about what people should speak in other countries; I'm talking about what they should speak in Lafayette, or the United States." And I say in response, "It's the 21st century, we've gone global, okay?!" People come from all over the world to live and work here and anywhere else jobs or family bring them. Should immigrants learn English? Yes, it'll serve them to do so. Should we deport them or deny them services if they don't? That just seems absurd and ignorant to me. It also seems counter-productive to fostering a healthy community.

I googled the term 'social services', and stumbled across this vision statement for the town of Culpepper: "Every individual and family in Culpeper will achieve optimum well-being in a community that fosters self-sufficiency, independence, health, safety, and mutual support." I really like that vision. And I think that suggesting folks who don't speak English don't deserve services does nothing towards that vision.

Photo 1 (sign) taken by "/kallu" http://flickr.com/photos/kallu/172147322/

Photo 2 (rock) taken by "eloc" http://flickr.com/photos/eloc/275420964/