SHOULD ALL LEGAL RESIDENTS BE REQUIRED TO SPEAK ENGLISH?

I believe the answer to this question is this: “Yes, yes, yes.” This “Yes” applies not just to citizens, but to all those who seek legal residence status here in America. They should also be required, as applicants for full citizenship are required, to learn some basic American history and be tested on various facts concerning our heritage. To ensure the strength, the unity, the character of our blessed country, we cannot continue to fill our communities with those who know, or care, little about who we are or where we have come from. The learning of our language is a large part of respecting and understanding who we are as a people.

In addition to the heritage and patriotism element of learning English, I’m very concerned about how much our country is spending on creating so much of our literature (menus, instruction manuals, signs, etc.) in two or more languages. I recognize that if a business wishes to be bilingual to accommodate its patrons, that’s all well and good. It makes a lot of sense in many areas to do this. However, when documents like drivers’ licenses are produced in two languages, at least a portion of the cost for this is being paid by taxpayers. For privately-produced documents and literature, the government absolutely needs to stay out of this and make no demands on a business or organization to produce bilingual materials or services.

Related to this, is it a good thing for our schools to require a second language to be learned by our students? Yes, I believe it is. It’s a healthy practice to be diverse in many areas of life, including language, but in too many instances in this arena, we have gone far beyond healthy. In the attempt to be compassionate and culturally diverse, we too often are bending over backward to conform to a culture that is not our own. This shouldn’t be confused with elitism or racism. Diversity is important; acceptance and openness are healthy; learning the ways of another culture is a good practice for all of us. But we must be careful not to lose who we are in the process. To continue to be the compassionate, giving, strong nation we have become, able to help the world in so many ways, we cannot lose who we are or forget where we have come from.

As I pointed out in my Patriotism post (and in my book, “Just 2 Simple Guys,”), doesn’t it make sense that it is our way of life that draws immigrants here in the first place? So why are we so often willing to change who and what we are to accommodate them?