Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack signed a bill Friday making Iowa the 10th state since 1995 to declare English the official language of state proceedings. It joins Alaska, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming as the only states in which English is the official language.
The Iowa law is a model of compassionate efficiency. All government documents and publications and proceedings, both state and local, must be in English. Emergency information pertaining to areas such as healthcare and necessary services, like informing suspects of constitutional rights, can be administered in the needed language.
These states recognize de jure what the entire nation recognizes de facto: English is the official language of the United States. The evidence is obvious. Almost every great piece of American literature and political thought is in English. Nearly all current American political, social and economic life is conducted in English. The vast majority of our media organizations publish in English, our schools teach in English, and our commercial outlets engage almost exclusively in English transactions.
Unlike Iowa, the other states' laws go too far in their pursuit of an English-only society. Some prohibit government agencies from conducting any of their business in a language other than English. Others ban court translators and multi-lingual emergency hot lines. This is not only dangerous, but it is counterproductive. A person in need of emergency medical assistance should not be endangered for not knowing how to say "heart attack." If you do not understand your constitutional rights as a criminal suspect, you cannot demand their recognition. Such restrictions do nothing more than alienate non-English speakers, making assimilation more difficult.
Language is the glue that holds any society together. In a nation as ethnically, religiously and geographically diverse as the United States, our common threads are few. But, the few we have, such as fluid communication, are critical to the structure of our nation's fabric. It gives life a common voice with which to share common experiences, and prevents us from losing our thoughts in translation. English-only, non-emergency services streamlined into one language also save the cost of providing translation.
These are not draconian measures designed to punish those "different" from the majority of Americans. If Hispanics in southern California want to speak Spanish at a block party, no one should prohibit them from doing so. If a grocer prints his signs in the neighborhood's dominant language, whether English, Korean, Spanish, French, Russian, or any other language, that's perfectly okay. No one wants to "whitewash" America by obliterating non-English languages from every day use. America always has been and should always be a nation of diversity, albeit one with a certain number of standard procedures to ensure our diversity does not supplant our efficacy.
The United States asks very little of its citizens: pay your taxes, obey the law and register for the draft if you're an adult male. That's a very low standard to live up to in exchange for the multitude of benefits citizenship offers. Persons coming to America do so to share in the unique social values and political freedoms this country has to offer. We're willing to accept all who want to share in our good fortune. To help the sharing, new immigrants studying for their citizenship need to be offered classes in how to speak English, and non-English speaking immigrants need to keep their end of the bargain by learning to speak their new nation's language.
The point of adopting an official language is to strengthen America as a nation and society. As we've propelled ourselves through the trials and tribulations of history, we've turned from an aggregate of separate territories into one nation. We need to make sure each successive generation of welcome immigrants is transformed from an assembly of separate groups into a vibrant part of the American family.
