Build bridges on borders, not walls

I'm reading in the papers that Congress is debating passing a bill stating that English is the "offical langauge" of the United States. I'm reading in the papers that a Seattle area restaurant has instated a policy that requires all meals to be ordered in English. I'm hearing my Grandmother state that she doesn't mind if people speak their own language at home or in private, but at the grocery store or at the bank they had better speak English, because this is America, and in America we speak English. When did we stop being a land of immigrants and become a land with only one culture? What makes us think our langauge or culture is somehow better than any other? Why should someone who comes to our country be required to speak "our" language? What is "our" langauge anyway? The majority of our citizens speak english, but only a simple majority. The number of spanish speakers is growing. There are thousands of other languages spoken here. Each of us knows someone who speaks another language fluently, or should.

Any of us who has attempted to learn a second language knows how difficult it is. So, why should any of us expect another to learn english before immigrating to our country? How can we expect a Chinese family fleeing religious persecution (for this is the principle we avow gave rise to our country), how can we expect them to bother learning a new language when they are in risk of losing their lives? If this is our requirement for immigration, or for citizenship, or even to buy groceries, how can we expect anyone to want to immigrate to our land?

Or is that the intent: to stop immigration, especially from Mexico and from the middle east? If we impose intense language rules, will we not keep out the illegal immigrants and the terrorists we so despise? Perhaps, but it's doutbful. The illegals are already risking their lives, and the terrorists will learn the language. However, we will punish the Indians, the Chinese, the Eastern Europeans, the Sudanese who arrive on our shores in hopes of prosperity, of freedom of thought, of a new chance, of freedom from oppression and violence. By building political walls against our "enemies" (and not all Mexicans or Middle Easterns are enemies), we also inhibit our friends. By damming the rivers we stop the salmon. And these friends are our greatest admirers. When I stand in awe of the prejudice of Americans, and lose my hope for a peaceful nation, I remind myself of this land's virtues by considering the immigrant. They come here because they hope for our way of life -- free to think, to speak, to prosper, to pursue happiness. They flatter us by their persistence in crossing our borders. They admire us, and then, sadly they become us. A hundred years after the Irish immigration, and four hundred years after the English colonized, we are all Irish, all English. Those Anglos who built America are so watered down now, that they consider themselves indigenous, and forget that others were here first. We forget that we were forbeared with long enough to send roots into this ground and establish ourselves; we converted from immigrants to Americans. During our transition we spoke our own languages, practiced our own traditions. And now we mock those immigrants who speak their own langauges and follow their own customs, as if we ourselves have never been different, never needed acceptance by an preceding culture. Those immigrants we oppress daily -- by noticing their robes, by stereotyping their turbans, by asking them to speak "our" language -- they will be like us someday, turning to oppress the next flood of immigrants who would flatter them. They will become Americans and then they will become snobs, like us.

Why do we attempt to make them into us? We tell them "become like us, or don't come." What high opinion of ourselves do we hold that convinces us they should be like us? On second thought, I'm not so sure we think so highly of ourselves. I think we're worried they have a better way and we will all adapt to be like them. I think really we're afraid we'll change, or our beloved country will change. Then what will be of our old country tis of thee? What will it be like? I don't know, but I can assure you, if we welcome the immigrants and welcome their languages and their diversity and their wisdom, we will be better for it. We as people will improve, and likewise our nation will improve. When the parts are better, the whole is better.

We should not, and cannot, ask immigrants to change to be like us, to speak our language. It is like how the whites belittled (and still belittle) the blacks and the asians for their differences. Asking a Mexican man to learn english so he'll be like the majority is a bit like asking a black woman to become white so she'll be like the majority. If we're asking them to learn english so they'll succeed, that is empowering. But if we pass a policy or bill that REQUIRES one to speak English, we show preference for one language, culture, and identity over others, and therefore oppress. This is the race problem with a new face. None of us would think today of judging a person based on their skin color, so why will we judge (and even legislate against) a person based on their language? Are not race and language a gift from one's parents? Do we choose our first language, or our skin color? Then how can we be punished for that which is not by our volition?

Our preference for our language over all others is unhealthy, it is oppressive, it is anti-social and it must stop. There is a principle in the Starbucks mission statement that expresses the desire to "embrace diversity." I like this because it does not hope that we might "tolerate" diversity, or be patient with it while it adapts to be like us, but rather it gives the image of hugging those who are different and finding ways to combine our strengths so that all langauges and all creeds and all colors might be considered American and might consider "American" something we want to be. And I think in the chaos that results from so many differences, from the absence of a homogenous face, from the teeming, huddled masses, we will see arising an America that is not afraid of change, not afraid of other cultures; we will see an America that is matured, and wiser, and willing to understand and accept people that are not white and english. This America will befriend the cultures it will no longer fear, and we may see an America that can support Muslim nations, and that can champion the efforts of so many Mexicans who cross our southern borders for the good of their families. We will thus befriend our enemies, and make them family. By this change and only by this befriending can we ensure America maintains its way of life and its identity: a land of immigrants who are free.