English language displaced in Washington State
09/14/2005
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Among the 4340 email in my inbox (I read them all - just a little behind answering) there are many heartrending expressions of agony from ordinary, immigration-impacted Americans.

A recent note from a reader who described herself as 55 years old, living in Eastern Washington State, made this particularly powerful point:

I am unemployed at present (with a degree) and the majority of the good jobs that I used to be able to work now all require Spanish….which I don’t speak! Illegal Mexicans work at the junk yards around here, not to mention the restaurants...I can’t even find a minimum wage job because I can’t speak Spanish and they have a corner on the market. Gosh, and I thought I could earn a living in America being born here and all!

In other words, Hispanics in this remote area nearly a thousand miles from the Mexican border have quietly reached critical mass in the workforce. For unilingual Americans, the displacement endgame is beginning. The only way now to prevent that displacement is Quebec-style legislation, re-establishing the primacy of English in the work place. (Libertarians who see some other way, let me know. But this is war, and wars are not good for libertarianism and other living things).

Language legislation works. Montreal is now unambiguously a French-speaking city.

As someone said, bring it on.

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