English is. in fact. the de facto official language of this country. Aside from the fact of common usagewhich is a fairly strong indicator of an official languagethe law reinforces the fact in several important areas at both the Federal and State level. These areas include our naturalization laws. our jury laws and State laws which dictate that English will be the language of instruction in schools. This is well and good. and commonsense should tell us that promoting the commonality of language is good for our society. In terms of helping to mainstream nonEnglishspeaking minorities in this country. it is also just plain good sense to encourage learning the English language. and in fact. the current generation of young people are becoming more and more English speaking and bilingual. We have got to be honest enough. however. to recognize that in the past some of our citizens were denied a reasonable opportunity to learn English. There were very real cultural and legal barriers. The situation was different from European immigrants whose children attended public schools and mixed in a diverse society. thus promoting English for the 2d generation. In many cases. the kids were bilingual while their parents spoke only their native language. It was an evolutionary process and it is more than likely that by the 3d generation. the children spoke only English. There are now American citizens who have lived on reservations or in barrios who were as confined in terms of the rest of society as my ancestors were in the programs in Poland. What was a natural evolution in language usage for European immigrants simply did not happen in many sections of this country. I see the bilingual requirement as a catchup measure. as part of an evolutionary process that should have taken place a generation ago. I do not believe bilingual ballots represent a threat to the commonality of the English language.
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naturalization immigrants