OPINION:
When my maternal grandfather, Israel Whitman, came to the U.S. from czarist Russia, he wouldn’t allow Yiddish to be spoken in his home. He knew that English was the key to success and believed he had a duty to his adopted country to speak its native tongue and ensure that his children did so.
His descendants included businessmen, lawyers, doctors, judges, columnists and tenured professors of English literature.
Without English, we can’t make America great again. The key to national revival is borders, law and language.
On Feb. 28, President Trump signed Executive Order 13166, designating English as our official language. The order does not require federal agencies to take any action but allows them to do whatever they consider appropriate.
It should serve as a rallying cry and a starting point.
The left has been busy building the Tower of Babel. This complements the unprecedented waves of illegal immigration under successive Democratic administrations, as many as 8.2 million in the past four years alone.
No fewer than 350 languages are spoken in the United States, including Urdu, Yoruba and Swahili.
Our foreign-born population is 15.8%, more than double what it was in 1970. In 1980, a language other than English was spoken in 11% of U.S. households. By 2007, it was 20%.
You can go through the public school system, get a driver’s license, work, vote and testify in court without knowing a word of English. In commercial transactions, “press 2 for another language” is standard.
Out of 195 countries, 180 have an official language. America was one of the 15 that didn’t. Yet from the very beginning, it has been widely acknowledged that we are an English-speaking nation.
John Jay, a co-author of the Federalist Papers and the first president of the Continental Congress, said one of the great strengths of our new nation was that we were “one united people” that spoke the same language.
A century later, President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed immigrants should be welcomed, served notice: “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boardinghouse.”
Every law enacted by Congress, every speech given on the floor of the House and Senate and all our great historical documents, starting with the Mayflower Compact, are in English.
Last week’s Rasmussen poll showed 73% of adult Americans think English should be our official language.
A majority of immigrants agree. They understand what my grandfather knew. If not for him, I might be plucking feathers in a poultry plant or mowing other people’s lawns.
So, what’s the problem? Why is this even controversial?
In the past half-century, a huge industry has grown to accommodate those who don’t or won’t speak English, including bilingual teachers, interpreters and those responsible for multilingual ballots and other forms of language-pandering.
This costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually and creates tens of thousands of jobs, mostly in the public sector.
Democrats don’t want foreign-born voters to learn English, which would give them access to a broad range of information. They want to keep them dependent on the partisan foreign language media, such as Univision.
Supporters of open borders want to make it as easy as possible for immigrants to live in the U.S. with as little effort as possible.
If a newcomer won’t learn English, what does that say about his desire to be part of America? If I moved to Mexico, I would consider myself honor-bound to learn Spanish. If I relocated to London, I would feel obligated to learn Arabic.
The diversity, equity and inclusion crowd thinks it’s discriminatory to expect foreigners to learn our language. Better the nation should adapt to them.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is a starting point.
It’s not enough to declare English our official language. What’s done by executive order can easily be undone similarly.
We must make official English a reality by doing everything possible to eliminate bilingual education, multilingual ballots and driver’s licenses for motorists who can’t read road signs.
How about press 1 for: “This is an English-speaking country, and we damn well intend to keep it that way.”
We need to take a wrecking ball to the polyglot boardinghouse. My grandfather would approve.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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