Just when we think there is nothing more Republicans can do to alienate themselves from Latino voters, when they have made it clear to most Latinos that they don't want us in their "big tent," out they come with more evidence to convince even the diehard Latino Republicans that they are unwelcomed in their own party.
For Latino Republicans who had refused to see the hidden agenda behind the movement to make English the official language of government, last week's Conservative Political Action Conference served a huge dose of reality. For those who were naive enough to believe the "official English" measure supported by GOP presidential candidates was only a symbolic gesture to recognize English as our national language, CPAC should have been an eye-opener.
"In law, we must declare English to be the official language of the United States of America," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, "And the reason for that is that, if you don't, they will make all kinds of excuses, and declare, 'well, the national language,' you know. It's got to be the official language so that the official functions of government are in English."
Mind you, he was not just talking about language, but about the official "functions" of government. This is what some naive Latino Republicans refuse to see. When they hear Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul blabbering about making English official, they refuse to see this is a campaign against their own community.
Of course, there are GOP Latino spinners still trying to sweep their party's English-only agenda under the rug. After all, we are supposed to believe that Republicans "love" legal immigrants and only have a problem with illegal immigration.
Nevertheless, the anti-Latino agenda behind the official English movement was clearly spelled out at the CPAC conference. It's about eliminating all government documents and services in Spanish. It's about disempowering the largely Democrat Hispanic community by eliminating bilingual ballots!
The presidential candidates don't come out and say it that way because they figure they still can get a few naive Latinos to vote for them. But King was talking to right-wing extremists, and he wanted to be clear about his intentions when he introduced the H.R.997, the English Language Unity Act of 2011.
He said the bill would serve as an amendment to the Voting Rights Act because, he said, "it imposes multiple language use when it comes to voting," and he wants that requirement stricken from current law.
For a party that claims to be the ultimate defender of freedom, you would think Republicans would be fighting to give us the freedom to vote — in any language. But since most Latinos historically vote for Democrats, Republicans are looking for ways to make immigrant voting more difficult. Apparently, they believe in freedom, but only for those who would vote for Republicans.
Amazingly, King's diatribe was delivered at a panel discussion that was tailor-made for white supremacists.
The name says it all: "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening the American Identity."
No, you don't have to pinch yourself. You are awake and living in the 21st century — a time when, incredibly, white supremacists still can conduct a workshop in a conference attended by presidential candidates, without causing widespread indignation!
After all, this is the conference where Republicans traditionally try to out right wing each other, the gathering where Romney, last week, tried to convince the audience that he had been an "extremely conservative" governor of Massachusetts. This was the place to feed red meat to those who are nourished by racism and xenophobia.
Hosted by ProEnglish, a hate-mongering organization devoted to censoring foreign languages, the panel featured Peter Brimelow, the anti-immigrant author of "Alien Nation" and founder of VDARE, a white nationalist website that promotes racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. VDARE was named after Virginia Dare, the first child born to English settlers in America.
Aha! Draw your own conclusions.
Brimelow, himself an immigrant from Britain, argues that immigration and race are winning issues for Republicans, but he says they need to "mobilize the white base — get them to turn out."
In his CPAC speech, Brimelow defined multiculturalism as "the determination of the elites not to press immigrants to assimilate." He argued that bilingualism actually hurts working Americans because he gets "email all the time from people at eastern Washington state and places like this, who say that kids can't get jobs at McDonald's and places like that because they don't speak Spanish." He said this is "a ferocious attack on the living standards of the American working class."
In other words, if we were all monolingual, McDonald's would have no need to hire Spanish speakers, and we could all live happily ever after. We would be promoting ignorance and isolating ourselves from the rest of the world, but that's OK with Brimelow.
"People like to say, 'well, it's a great thing for people to speak more than one language,'" Brimelow told the CPAC participants Thursday. "I think it's hogwash, myself. I've never felt the absence of more than one language."
What can you say when you hear an alleged intellectual promoting ignorance and rejecting diversity — and reality?
You would have to find a lost colony in the Amazon to perhaps see a place on this planet where there is no diversity or multiculturalism. But that's the America envisioned by extremists such as Brimelow — a white country of European heritage and as isolationist as an Amazon colony.
What can you say about the conference that allowed the participation of such a character and about the presidential candidates who also pandered there?
Were the candidates thinking about the Latino vote when they spoke at CPAC? With this new eye-opener, will Latino Republicans finally see the light?
When Latino GOP spinners tell us that Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Paul are our "amigos," we should remind them that— if they work for the government — their candidates would forbid their use of Spanish.
To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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As a lifelong registered Democrat, I too support English as the official and lawful language of the United States. We only have to look to the troubles of Canada and their separatist movement in Quebec to see where bilingualism leads.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Gunther
Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:28 AM
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This wouldn't allow me to post directly to Author so sorry I'm going to respond here.
Miguel Perez, I'm writing about an article you wrote in the nctimes titled, "Wooing the Latino Vote----A Lesson in GOP hypocrisy" I found the article to be mostly a political rant against both the Republicant's and the Democrat's. You make it sound like you weild, (or Latino's weild) some "magic" or some "sort of spell" over the upcoming elections. And if one Party dosen't kiss your ring and say we will do your bidding, than the Latino's will snatch victory out of their hands. I'm sorry to say that the upcoming elections will not be desided by Latino's anymore than they'll be desided by the LBGT voters. It's not minorities that win elections, it's majoritie's. And the majority of American's this cycle is firmly in the hands of the dwindling middle class, and the poor. People who got taken to the cleaners by the 1% or the corperation's are freaking pissed and you are going to see the people who make up 90% of this Country are going to control the vote in every state. The only sense that could be made of your article was when you described Republicant's stand on the extreme opposite side of the Hispanic community on many other important issues like education, immigration, health care, multilingualism, diversity, affirmative action, equal rights. But even that arguement is flawwed, in the sense that the 90% I'm talking about cares deeply about some of those issues. Such as Healthcare, Education, Diversity, and Equal Rights. Where your missing the mark is by saying that Rep.'s stand on the extreme opposite side of The Hispanic community on such issue's. As if these are Hispanic problems. They are 100% not. These are American problem's. The problem with the hispanic community is it screams for equality and immagration reform, multiliqualism, affermitive action, and equal rights. And you seperate yourselves by talking this way. You co-opt yourself by claiming the Latino Vote. Well are you latino's or American's? Are Hispanic communities diverse? Are they not on American soil, making them American communities? Your culture is unique from every other country that immagrated here. You want to come over here and start demanding things from our Government. You said in your piece "since the Democrats didn't offer you any help, both sides should avoid debating immagration." I'm sorry our Country is not a Country of hand out's. When my family immagrated here in the earley 1900's, they didn't demand help from the Government, they came here penniless, kept there heads down in humility and worked hard to create a better life. They did their best to ascemilate and teach their kids English, and made them proad to be in America, a land of oppoutunities not offered by the countries they left behind. You would do well to learn from them. Latino's come over with the entitlment attitude, that they should be given the same rights as American's, they should be given an education, they should be allowed to demand of America to accept their language as an offical language, to grant them citizenship automaticlly. Based on what? We accept immergrants from other countries every year, and we accept some for political asylym. But they get acess to our countrie because they worked hard to learn our language and our history, they come over on work visa's to offer something to America, they come b/c they are escaping brutal conditions, and we grant them asylym. We are proud to share our great country with these people and all people but we prefer it be done legally. But even when it's not, we do accept your children in our schools, we still offer medical care, we still offer Government programs like welfare an food stamps, and so much more. And you would think you would be appriciative or at least feel humbled enough to put your heads down and make a better life for you and yours. Or if we are treating you so poorly your free to go back to your home countries. But no, the reason you left was for a chance at a better life. Well here it is, stop bitching. But instead you take all these things as if there owed to you, you ask us to accept your language but you won't learn ours. You rant and rage about the injustice in America done to Latinos or Hispanics. I say if you concider yourself Latino's or Hispanic's than you should be living in those countries because here we are in the United States and only Amrerican's live here. So instead of writing articles about how much this country isn't doing for you, write about all the things this country has done for you. You may take this as me being anti-hispanic or whatever, but that's the futherest thing from the truth. I accept all immagrants wheather from Brazil or Mexico. I just say, Welcome to America, Now Learn to Speak English, and ascemilate.
Comment: #2
Posted by: jason
Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:29 PM
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This is in response to this current article. I must be missing something?? What is it such an offense to Latino's for our Country to claim English as it's offical language? That is the predominant language we speak in the United State's. I mean France has it's Official language listed as French, In Japan there official language is Japanese, and so on, Mexican's speak Spanish. Are you outraged at all of them to? Why is this such a big deal? Our Government does conduct it's business in the English language, and that makes you mad? I mean I've thought about immagrating from America to maybe Norway or Denmark or other European Countrie's, but as I consider it I make a list in my head of what I would need to accomplish in order to be successful. I list learning about the Countires history, Current Culture, economic's, language, population, climate, etc. But I'm certainly not going to show up in Germany and demand their Government not have German as there official language. It should be English because that's what I speak. And if I went to get a job I wouldn't expect a coffee shop wuld hire me to serve German people all day and not know a lick of German. Where does this sense of entitlment come from? Please I'm asking, please tell me. I say again if you want to live in your Culture and have everything written in Spanish for you, and you don't want to learn Engllish, and you want to work somewhere where English is not spoken, then by all means return to your home countries. Because the thought or idea that you have the right to come to a Native Country and say that we as a people and we as a Government have to accept your Culture here, we must speak your language but you don't speak our's, that we should make everything from grocery items to fast food to street signs, in both English and Spanish for you to read, we must print ballots in Spanish, etc. Do you believe your the only immagrants in America? Are you that narrow minded? (you don't have to answer last question I already know) Do you see Asian immagrant's demanding these thing's? Or Jewish Immagrant's, Muslim, Italian, Dutch, Somalian's, just to name a few. You are completly illogical. There is no reason for the demands you try and force on us. You are not more important than any of the people's I just named. You don't deserve special treatment, you don't deserve what we've given you and keep giving to your Hispanic base. We don't do these things for these other immagrant's. And they don't ask. Why? Because they know what it was like in their countries and their happy and content being here, with oppourtunity and success for those who work for it. They know everything from here on out is earned, and they don't want special treatment. No, you know what they want. They want to one day for maybe their son or daughter, or grandchildren to go to College or discover all the opportunities laid before them, and for them to be consider American's inside and out, it's the very thing that brought them over here, and they knew they might not acheive it themselve's, but they opened the door for future Generation's of their namesake to live out the dream of an immagrant from decades ago. If you don't feel the same way. If you would rather bring Mexico, or Spain or Latino culture into America and not change at all. And you want to remain the same generation after generation. Please do it somewhere else. We don't want it here. We desire a better and brighter future for our children and our children's children. Not food stamps, dropout's, criminals, welfare. etc. Please have the cahonais (balls) to write back.
Comment: #3
Posted by: jason
Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:06 PM
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This is a response to your comment Jason. We are an incredibly diverse nation not only linguistically but also ethnically. The US, unlike many European countries, has had a very rich history of immigration. We, again, unlike other European nations, do not pretend like immigrants have not been part of our country's history. We acknowledge and embrace their contributions. We are well aware that we are a country of immigrants. And Guess what? We've have done just fine. I don't feel that not having English as the official language has made us any weaker in the eyes of the world. In fact, this says great things about the US. We are not France and/or Japan (an incredibly homogenous society). Your comparisons to these countries are irrelevant and do not reflect the different countries' histories. I came to the US at an early age. I speak Spanish at home. While at times, I question my own identity, I feel as American as the next guy. I also feel that I have every right to speak up and express my views even if they may not be the most popular ones. Why should I feel less entitled to an opinion, because I am an immigrant? Should I be happy to have food on the table? It's funny when people make it seem like immigrants should be grateful for being here. Of course, undermining the struggles that an immigrant must face to come to the US and while in the US. Also undermining the fact that we are human beings and it is our right to be treated as such. Not as second class citizens that must be silenced. Do I think English should be the official language, absolutely not! Should it be Spanish, absolutely not! We are a multicultural society and if we are to move forward we need to respect and honor differences. These may be linguistic, ethnic, class, etc. I think that Miguel makes a legitimate point in noting how the Republicans use language as a means to exclude.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Anonymous
Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:34 AM
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