Fficial Language Movement

The Official Language Movement

The first article that I read was how the House of Representatives supported bilingual ballets in 31 of the 50 states. The House of Representatives agreed that that non-English speaking citizens should be able to cast a ballot in the own language. This is not anything most of the house wanted because the vote was 254 to 167 in support of the ballot to support bilingual voting. The conservative Republicans wanted to push to make English the official national language. The people that supported the non-English ballots did make the point that only the U.S. citizens were able to vote anyway. Minority speaker Nancy Pelosi said “that taking away the right to bilingual ballots would allow states and localities to discriminate against taxpaying American citizens because of their language ability and impede their right to vote”. A lawsuit was settled with Brazos County, Texas for not allowing Spanish-speaking citizens the voting materials and ballots in Spanish which in turn prevent them from getting the help they needed to vote. Personally I think the House of Representatives did the correct thing when they decide to change the ballots to adhere to the language barriers of people. Not everyone is able to speak English so it is only right that citizens of the U.S., whether English speaking or not be given the chance that we have.

The second article I read was about how the federal government is taking steps to prohibit bilingual education in a few states. This keeps students along with the Native- Americans from learning their own language in school. The article goes on to state how Silicon’s valley millionaire Ron Unz spearheaded a four state ballot to ban bilingual education. In the last election in Massachusetts, 70% of the voters approved the English for the Children law which takes away bilingual education away from those who need it. In Colorado, a similar vote was taken and it was defeated (56% to 44%) in part to a...