Almost every American agrees with that. Thats why we created our common schools 150 years ago. In the words of Al Shanker. as I said yesterday. we created the common school to help mostly immigrant children learn to read and write in English and learn math and to learn what it meant to be an American. In 1906 we passed a law that anyone who becomes a citizen of this country needs to pass a test in English. Today we require it to be an eightgrade level of understanding of English. This Senate. by a 91toi vote last month. said that as we consider an immigration bill. we better focus especially. and redouble our efforts. on helping prospective citizens become Americans because when we have a lot of people from other countries come here. the real limit on that is how quickly we can assimilate them into our culture. how quickly they can become Americans. We want new legal immigrants. but we do not want enclaves of people living here who have their allegiance to other countries and who permanently decide to speak another language and who dont pledge allegiance to our flag. That underlies our debate on immigration as much as anything else. So this is a very fundamental issue for me. and I believe it is so for a great many Americans. It is important for the people of this country to know that 12 of us in the Senate have before this body a very simple resolution. not about what we are made to do but about what we ought to do. and what we ought to dowhether we are at our Boy Scout or Cub Scout meeting or whether we are opening the day in the Senate. and we say the Pledge of Allegiancewe ought to say it in our common language.
Identified stereotypes
Generalization that immigrants might not pledge allegiance to the flag or assimilate into American culture.