Newt voter?

The Secretary of Homeland Security shall, within 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, issue for public notice and comment a proposed rule for uniform testing English language ability of candidates for naturalization, based upon the principles that-- (1) all citizens should be able to read and understand generally the English language text of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which are made in pursuance thereof; and (2) any exceptions to this standard should be limited to extraordinary circumstances, such as asylum.

The real purpose of the proposed federal legislation is to make it almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen. Again, although Republicans claim to hate regulation, this bill provides that

In the previous Congress (the 111th) a variety of similar bills were introduced. HR 764, the American Elections Act would have required pretty much all ballots in all federal elections be printed in English. And we begin, thereby to get the measure of this beast -- it seems to be aimed at keeping down the votes of immigrants, traditionally thought to lean Democratic, by denying them naturalization by way of obscure constitutional questions.

A true patatriot!

U.S. English, which goes about the country flogging this non-issue, has a handy website with lotsa info about state legislation. One of the more insidious pieces of work is H.F. 64 , pending in Minnesota. This would bar the use of interpreters when taking a driver's license test. Of course U.S. English pretends it's not trying to mandate that private individuals actually speak English, but this legislation, if adopted nation-wide, would effectively do that. Imagine also the effect if combined with voter ID laws.

And it appears that ProEnglish has it in for driver's license examination conducted other than in English. Currently these are conducted in a wide variety of languages, varying state by state. Minnesota for example conducts driver's license exams in English, Hmong, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Vietnamese.

Similar legislation was introduced in Georgia in 2010. The excuse is that public safety requires that people be able to read English language road signs. Of course, there is no requirement that illiterate persons born in the U.S. learn sufficient English -- under the Georgia proposed legislation, they would be permitted to take an oral examination.

It appears that at least as of February 2011 the wheels fell off this legislation in a moment of sanity in the Georgia legislature. Note that the bill sponsors persisted even though the Georgia DMV already administered a very basic test to make sure people understood simple highway signs, such as "STOP".

Similar legislation has (as of February 2011 made it past a House committee in Missouri. Other states (report as of 2/4/11 here) considering similar legislation are Montana, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.

In May, 2010, a Republican (natch!) state legislator introduced similar legislation in North Carolina. ( .PDF ). Among the idiocy here:



The Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles, shall not publish any examination or handbook in a language other than English.

Feel safer already? Now, because a driver's license or ID card is required to vote in North Carolina, and a lot of other states, North Carolina's Republican-proposed legislation had an exemption from the English requirement for ID cards. In practice this would likely be of no real effect, and the English proficiency requirement for driver's licenses could be relied on as another means of keeping down the vote from a segment of the voting population (non-proficient English speakers) thought to lean Democratic.



Are language are English!

... he’s talked with state lawmakers pushing the proposal, as well as with leaders from foreign companies doing work in Tennessee, such as Volkswagen.

“We’re having a lot of conversations with – we have a lot of Japanese businesses located here, a lot of German businesses and other folks, and we want to make certain we’re not doing anything to inhibit that.”

But the measure’s sponsor, State Senator Bill Ketron, argues it really won’t affect such companies.

“I said ‘Governor, all those folks that come from Germany, they’re probably smarter than we are. They speak four or five languages.’ And I said I’m not concerned about that, and I haven’t really heard that from any of the industries.”

Ketron says the current proposal makes exceptions for people with valid visas.>

Let's have a look at the Tennessee proposal. A report from WPLN (again from February) says that as of that time, the bills backers, who were coming under pressure from various foreign companies, had tweaked it so that holders of valid temporary visas were not required to speak English proficiently. According to the report, the governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam says:

In other words, we've tweaked it so only those Hispanics will get hammered. The Montana endeavor illustrates more of the bullshit associated with this. From the linked report on landlinemag.com:

Montana now allows exams to be offered in English, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Rep. Janna Taylor, R-Dayton, said that it is a form of prejudice to offer the test in only four languages.

See, it would be RACIST to offer it the just in four languages, and not also Pig Latin and Klingon. So we'll have it in just one language, mirabile dictu it'll be English!