A Stitch in Haste

In an admittedly “back room” sort of way, the West Virginia Legislature has declared English the official language of that State:

The language amendment was quietly inserted into a bill addressing the number of members that cities can appoint to boards of parks and recreation. Among mundane details about record-keeping, the amendment adds the provision that "English shall be the official language of the State of West Virginia."
...
Andrew Schneider, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said English-only laws are based on the false premise that immigrants will not learn English without government coercion.

"And English-only laws do nothing constructive to increase English proficiency. They simply discriminate and punish those who have not yet learned English," Schneider said.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Public-English laws are not at all based on the premise that immigrants need to be “coerced” into learning English. They are based on the premise that it is unreasonably expensive for government to have to provide its services multilingually to accommodate insular minorities who have the option and expectation of assimilating into this country.

I suppose that, if one chooses to play fast and loose with the dictionary, then yes one might say that non-English speakers face “discrimination” and “punishment” — in the same sense that the Army “discriminates” against those unable to fire an M-16 rifle or a state bar “punishes” those who don’t go to law school.

But the consider the alternative. To accommodate without regard to cost or consequence all those who expect the government to function in however many languages the Politics of Pull can muster in turn “punishes” those who fulfill their obligation to learn English, and they face “discriminatory” taxes that subsidize an extraneous government function.

Do some people advocate public-English laws out of mere animus toward certain immigrant groups? Undoubtedly. But that does not cancel out the enormous economic benefits of having a single language of government and an unifying element of American culture.

It was unfortunate that West Virginia passed this law the way it did. It is not unfortunate, however, that the law was passed at all.

Hit & Run has a comment thread on this.

UPDATE: West Virginia's governor has vetoed the bill on technical grounds, although he supports the concept (indeed, he had sponsored similar bills himself as a state legislator). Stay tuned...