In no particular order, here are ten things to consider if
you consider yourself a Nashville Republican and support
the English Only amendment to the Metro Charter.
1. The official language of Tennessee, and all of its
governmental entities, including its political
subdivisions, is already English.
2. The English Only charter amendment is premised on a fear
that Metro government meetings will some day be ambushed,
and held in a non-English language. The only person who has
ever done this (and who did it while also knowing English),
is the amendment's chief supporter. In short, it is
addressing a problem that neither exists nor is imminent.
3. The English Only amendment will do nothing to stem
illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants already come here,
knowing they do not know the language. Legislating English
"only" will work as well as gun control, and is based on
the same false belief that just because you pass a law, it
does not mean people are going to follow it.
4. English Only also affects legal immigrants. Millions of
people during the existence of our Republic have legally
arrived on our shores knowing only their native language.
Today is no different. Studies today still show that the
second generation becomes fluently bilingual, and by the
third generation, the native tongue is lost altogether.
5. Everyone reading this is an immigrant. Many are of
German descent. There was a fear in the latter part of the
19th century in Pennsylvania that the German language would
"take over" because 1/3 of the population spoke German.
That did not happen, and the percentage of Spanish speakers
in Nashville is significantly less than 1/3.
6. The English Only amendment is too broad to affect just
illegal immigration. The amendment could have been tailored
to deny government services to those who cannot show proper
documentation of their residency. This would have been
effective, non-duplicative, and would have garnered my
support. What we have instead is the equivalent of using a
bulldozer to perform brain surgery.
7. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Executive
Order 13166 requires that any local government department
that receives federal money must provide its services in
multiple languages. Of the $110,000.00 Metro spends per
year on the translation hotline, over 97% of its usage is
by Title VI affected programs. That means we are spending
up to half a million dollars on an election that will save
us, at most, $3,100.00 per year. It will take over 100
years to realize the nominal savings from holding this
election.
8. Nashville's documented non-native born population
tripled from 1990 to 2000, from 12,662 to 39, 596. It is
estimated that it has potentially increased by another
5,000 to 6,000 since then. These people will eventually
vote, and are learning English. Immigrants accounted for
45% of the city's population growth. English Only sends a
message of exclusivity that is unnecessary, and will be
politically disastrous for us as a party. We should be
welcoming new Americans (and voters).
9. It has been admitted by English Only's chief supporters
that it is largely symbolic, and even they admit they don't
know what its actual effects will be. This should be
concerning. When Republicans advocate excess legislation,
we rightly get angry with them. In this way, we ought not
be supporting legislation that has no actual, positive
effects.
10. No major city has passed such an amendment.
Clarksville, Tennessee, the home of Ft. Campbell, has
rejected an English Only bill. However, other, smaller
cities have adopted it, such as Inez, Kentucky (pop. 466),
Landis, North Carolina (pop. 2,996) and Hazleton,
Pennsylvania (pop. 23,329). We as a city must choose what
league we want to be in. The contention that this is
"cutting edge" is actually the opposite.
Well, I have one more, actually...
11. The group pledging resources to English First, the
local group promoting the English Only amendment, is called
ProEnglish. ProEnglish is an offshoot of FAIR (the
Federation for American Immigration Reform). Both groups
were founded by John Tanton. Tanton was on the population
control committee for the Sierra Club in the early 1970s,
and is opposed to all immigration. His group, FAIR, of
which ProEnglish is a part, has been connected to various
sundry groups (an Anti-Defamation League report on FAIR can
be found here). FAIR has knowingly accepted money from the
Pioneer Fund, described by the editorial board of The Wall
Street Journal as a "white-supremacist outfit devoted to
racial purity through eugenics."
----------------------------------------------------
Nathan Moore is a rare breed - a conservative thinker,
author and criminal defense attorney. He lives in
Nashville, Tennessee, and co-authors the political blog
MooreThoughts.com with his wife, and maintains his own
criminal defense blog, the Moore Law Blog.
To read more from Nathan Moore, be sure to visit
http://www.moorethoughts.com .
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