Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Oh, come on. That's a stretch and you know it. I think we should let every immigrant who wants to come here into the country. But the only way to really force us to interact is to give us one, ceremonial official language.
We can't have much of a metling pot if the different groups among us remain doggedly sectionalized by language barriers.
English was, is and always should be the primary language of this country.
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I'm not talking about immigrants. I'm talking about voters.
I don't know about where you come from, but where I come from the ballots are written in Spanish because the voters in the districts speak and read and write in Spanish*. And those voters are legitimate, registered voters who have just as much right to participate in government as anyone else. And they should not be barred from participating, or worse, not being fully informed when they do participate, because of the language barrier.
The democracy is not in jeapordy because the ballots are written in languages that the people who are making the decisions about how our country is run can understand. But the concept is certainly threatened when we start preventing people from meaningfully casting their ballots.
There are plenty of places in this country where English is not and has never been the primary language, and yet somehow the country hasn't fallen apart.
*and Vietnamese
