All Hank, all the time.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
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.

An honest question, because I am not deeply familiar with the naturalization process, but:

(a) How in the world do immigrants become citizens (and thus voters) without knowing how to speak, read & write basic English? They must have changed the citizenship tests a lot in the last couple of decades I suppose?

(b) If we are dealing not with immigrants, but with second generation folks from largely Spanish-speaking households, how is it that they grow to adulthood in the U.S. without knowing how to speak, read & write basic English? I guess the answer would not reflect well on our system of public education, but that is no surprise.

I have no objection to making government documents available in multiple languages, and I don't want to exclude any American citizen or legal resident from understanding and participating fully in our democracy, but I do think that a common language is one key to national unity.

So, I guess I'd say that everyone in the US who is or wants to be an "American" "should" work to learn English. In their copious spare time. I'd reccommend those Berlitz language CDS -- they can all listen in their cars.

S_A_M