Monday, July 15, 2002
Green Bay to Vote on Official English on July 17th
Today's Chicago Tribune carries a story, "Green Bay becomes diverse--and divided." The Tribune requires individual registration and has pop-up ads extremely difficult to get rid of, so I will provide just two quotes to give you the sense of the article:
"Communities where immigration is new tend to see foreign languages as symbolic of segregation or a lack of assimilation. They don't look beyond that," said Victor Greene, an immigration scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "So they ease their fears by passing these laws."
The story also noted that the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce issued a statement against "this hateful act and the small-minded attitudes that gave birth to it."
As you can see, opponents of official English are not short of venom.
Keep in mind that most multilingual mandates come from the federal government, so Green Bay's best efforts would eliminate no translation services. Really, all Green Bay is trying to do is encourage immigrants to learn the language so they need not depend on the accuracy of those translations.
If you want to even the odds a bit, you can contact the Brown County Board of Supervisors. But please so quickly. The supervisors are expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday, July 17th.
|posted by Jim on 11:19 PM|
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