10 Considerations for Republicans Who Are Supporting Nashville's English Only Amendment
Posted: Friday, January 30, 2009
by Nathan Moore
Moore Trademarks
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.
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."
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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.
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