[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 24]
[House]
[Pages 32508-32514]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                PROMOTING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE UNITY ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Clay). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and privilege to be 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States 
Congress again. As many of the Members move forward to go home for the 
weekend and spend time with their families and their constituents and 
get in touch with the issues of the day, I delayed my transportation, 
so I have an opportunity to address you and, in the process, address 
the American people.
  It occurs to me that there is subject after subject that doesn't 
quite emerge here on the floor of this Congress for an open topic of 
debate, and there are central issues around which we should be shaping 
policy, that policy that affects and directs the destiny of our 
country.
  Some would say that the bill that passed here off the floor, the 
energy bill, will solve our energy problems and move our destiny in the 
right direction. I am a skeptic of that, Mr. Speaker. I don't come to 
address that so much.
  But I believe this, that as a people we must be bound together. There 
is something unique about being an American. It is something unique, 
that it is different than coming from another nation in the world. We 
brought together all people from all cultures and all civilizations and 
assimilated them into this society to produce a common culture, a form 
of cultural continuity that binds us together as Americans.
  As I listen and engage in debate, and as I read and study history and 
watch the reactions of people around me and think what it must have 
been like 50 years ago, when I wasn't quite paying attention in this 
country, or 100 years ago, when I wasn't around, or 200 years ago 
obviously, as America was shaped, what is it that is unique about us? 
What has given us our vitality? What has bound us together so that we 
can work together as one people?
  There are a number of common denominators. We live in the same 
geographical area, we share a common history and we adhere to the rule 
of law. English common law flowed across the Atlantic Ocean and was 
established here in this continent, actually not too far down the 
coastline down at Jamestown in 1607 in Virginia. Four hundred years ago 
English common law arrived here in the United States.
  But another thing that has taken place that is a common denominator, 
that has bound us together, that has been a powerful force for our 
society, for the American interests, and a powerful force throughout 
all humanity, is to have a common language.
  Now, one can just take the globe at about any time, and let's just 
say going backwards across history, generation by generation, 
recognizing that national boundaries have shifted over time. They shift 
because of political transformations within the countries and they 
shift because of wars.
  You can take this back to the city-state era before we actually had 
nation-states, and identify that the boundaries around the city-states 
and the boundaries around the nation-states from 300 years ago and 
earlier were often boundaries that were drawn by lines of language.
  Languages grew up in colloquial regions, and because people 
communicated with each other verbally, languages evolved. And because 
people didn't travel in those days the way they travel today, then the 
languages that evolved in certain locales got more and more distinct 
and more difficult for the neighbors to understand.
  Of course, we track language through, and because of commonalities in 
language, we also track the migrations and histories of people. But a 
common language has defined the boundaries of nation-states throughout 
history.
  In France, they speak French; in England, they speak English; in 
Spain, they speak Spanish; in Portugal, they speak Portuguese; in China 
they speak Chinese; in Russia, they speak Russian. Why is that? I never 
hear anybody talk about that. But the reason for that is because common 
languages, the languages have defined the boundaries of nations, of 
nation-states.
  Why does a nation-state have a boundary that is defined by its 
languages? It is because they are a common people. Whether they are 
Italians or Spaniards or French, they are a common people that are 
bound together by a common language. They have a common cause. They 
have a common sense of history. They work together. They communicate 
with each other. They do business together with far less suspicion 
because they can communicate quickly and effectively and efficiently 
with a common language.
  There are things that come through languages that cannot be written 
into print, into the Congressional Record, for example. There is voice 
inflections. There are pauses that are parts of communication. There 
are certain kinds of pronunciations that change the meaning of a 
sentence. You can write a sentence out in English, and if you change 
the meaning of the word ``read'' and ``read,'' it spells the same but 
it means something different. There are all kinds of pronunciations and 
voice inflections throughout all languages that change the meaning of 
the communications of that language.

[[Page 32509]]

  Because of all the nuances that come from the languages and because 
of the difficulty in understanding very many different languages, we 
tend to bind ourselves together, pulled around a common sense of 
purpose, which is a common language.
  The strength of America is also common with the strength of many of 
the other nations, the nations that I mentioned. We have had a common 
language, too. The common language here in the United States has been 
English. It has been English since the beginning of the settlement in 
this continent. Yes, there have been challenges to it. We know there 
was a challenge from the German language. If I remember correctly, it 
was Benjamin Franklin who said that if we weren't careful, that the 
Germans would assimilate the English speakers before they were 
assimilated into the English-speaking culture.
  But we know that didn't happen. We know that the English language 
prevailed. And we know that there have been significantly sized 
enclaves in America that persisted in hanging on to a language other 
than English, but eventually, historically, they have assimilated into 
all speaking this common language called English.
  Well, if one were going to shape and develop and devise a nation-
state that had the very best prospect of succeeding and prospering, one 
of those essential components, and perhaps the most essential 
component, would be that the people of a nation-state speak a common 
language.
  We have understood that in this country since the beginning of the 
establishment of the United States of America. In fact, Noah Webster I 
think understood it I think as well as anyone in the history of our 
country.
  When we think about the history of Noah Webster, the author of the 
original American English dictionary, as he traveled around through the 
13 original colonies of his time and he entered into region after 
region, he noticed that sometimes he couldn't understand what they were 
saying. They were all speaking English, most of them were speaking 
English, but they had chosen to use certain terms in a different way. 
They had adopted definitions on to other words. They had changed their 
pronunciations of words. And as he watched this and as he traveled and 
listened, he began to realize that the colloquial regions in the United 
States were forming and shaping their own unique languages. Even though 
they were rooted in English for the most part, he didn't believe it 
would be very long, another generation or two, and the American people 
would be no longer speaking the same language; that other languages 
were evolving from the English language that arrived here, and that 
eventually some regions in the United States wouldn't be able to 
communicate with their neighbors.
  And Noah Webster believed, and I think correctly, that that would 
have brought about divisions within the United States, and we would 
eventually not be a unified country because of our inability to 
communicate with each other. And even though there is always a way to 
facilitate communication, even though we can do sign language and we 
can write notes and we can get an interpreter and exchange 
communications, and we do that, of course, in this country every day in 
our international trade constantly, that is not the same as having an 
instantaneous form of communication where everyone understands 
everybody and we have that ability to exchange ideas and measure the 
voice inflection and the pronunciation so that the communication of the 
message is clear.
  Noah Webster understood that. So he set about writing the American 
English dictionary for that purpose, to be able to provide a common use 
of language, to provide a common language for the United States, an 
official language for the United States.
  It was Noah Webster's dream that in the Constitution of the United 
States there would be a constitutional amendment that would establish 
English as the official language of the United States of America. He 
didn't see his dream realized, partly because he helped solve the 
problem by drafting and writing his American English dictionary. He did 
so for the express purpose of providing a common language, a 
utilization of the English language that would be universal from Maine 
to Florida, all the way up and down the coast of the 13 original 
colonies, because he understood that if people persisted in different 
pronunciations for the same word and different definitional use of the 
same word, that eventually the communications would break down among us 
as a people and we would be pitted eventually against each other. We 
would begin to see our neighbors as someone other than our friend and 
our neighbor and our countryman because we couldn't easily communicate 
with him.
  So he wrote the American English dictionary, established a common 
language in the United States, and to some extent solved the problem, 
and it was not necessary in those years to pass a constitutional 
amendment to establish English as the official language of the United 
States.
  That is the history of Noah Webster and that is the contribution that 
he gave to this country. And I think that he established that principle 
of a common language of English and protected it and preserved it. And 
if we never had Webster, if we had not had someone who had the vision 
to establish a common language for our country, we may not have held 
together throughout those years. We may not have actually gotten 
through the Civil War and bonded ourselves back together again. We 
might not have fought side by side in the Spanish-American War or World 
War I or World War II. We might not be the world's only unchallenged 
superpower today, if we hadn't had the wisdom of the early settlers in 
the United States, if we hadn't had the wisdom of the Founders, if we 
hadn't had the wisdom of a Noah Webster to establish English as a 
common language here in the United States of America.
  Now, I want to make the point that in those years there were other 
languages that could have been just as successful. English was the 
language that was the language of our original settlers here in the 
largest number. It could have been German, it could have been French, 
it could have been Spanish. You can make a case for that throughout 
history.
  But whatever that case is, it is English today. And English happens 
to be also the global language of commerce. It is the language we do 
business in in the world. It is the language that we negotiate 
politically in. At the roundtable in Brussels, at the European Union, 
when we sit around that roundtable and negotiate with all of those 
member nations, now I can't actually keep track, it was 15 when I was 
there last, I think it has gone to 25. But the language of negotiations 
in Europe around the roundtable at Brussels in the European Union is 
English. The representatives there, the French speak English, the 
Spanish speak English, the Portuguese speak English, because there 
needs to be a common language of communication. What will it be?
  What will the documents be printed in? Do they get printed in 300-
some languages that we commonly talk of as being the utilized number of 
languages in the globe? Or can it be printed in one? Well, if you have 
a common language, one is it. There is only one definition, there is 
only one understanding, and there is no misunderstanding, at least 
substantially less misunderstanding, excuse me.
  So if a common language, an official language, a language of 
communications at the European Union in Brussels is English, and if the 
international language of business and commerce is English, and it is, 
and the international language of air traffic controllers that commands 
all airplanes that are flying and being controlled by air traffic 
controllers in America is English, and it is, and if the language of 
the maritime industry, the language that tells ships how to avoid 
running into each other in the fog is English, and English is the 
common language of the United States of America, and it gives us a 
competitive advantage with the rest of the world that does not speak 
English as fluently when it comes to business, and if it is the 
language we use when we negotiate in our

[[Page 32510]]

trade relationships with other countries and the language we use when 
we negotiate our political disagreements and arrive at our agreements 
is English, then there is no case that I can think of to be made for 
the official language of the United States being anything else other 
than English.

                              {time}  1730

  And, Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to promote a piece of 
legislation, H.R. 997, the English Language Unity Act, and it 
establishes English as the official language of the United States of 
America.
  I have just made the case that we didn't need to do that in the early 
1800s or the early 1900s, because the people of this country understood 
the utility of having a common language, English, and because many of 
the people who came here as legal immigrants adopted themselves to and 
adapted themselves to and assimilated themselves into an English-
speaking culture.
  One of the examples would be my grandmother, who arrived here from 
Germany on March 26, 1894, and she walked through the Great Hall at 
Ellis Island. She came on the ship New York. Her name is on the 
manifest. And as she traveled across the United States, having made a 
commitment to this country, she got married to my grandfather. But my 
father was raised in a German-speaking home. And when he went to 
kindergarten on his first day, which is interesting, a German term 
``kindergarten,'' and it is kindergarten all over America even though 
it is a German term, but he came back from his first day. He went to 
kindergarten speaking German, he came back from his first day and said 
hello to his mother in German. And as my grandmother was working in the 
kitchen and welcomed him home from his first day of school, she turned 
to him when he had greeted him in German and said to my father, 
Speaking German in this household is for you from now on verboten. I 
came here to become an American and I need to learn English. And you 
shall go to school and learn English and bring it home and teach it to 
me. And from that moment forward, my father was forbidden from speaking 
German in his household because his job was to learn English, to 
embrace America, to embrace this host Nation, and to teach English to 
his mother, which he did pretty well.
  He never taught her I don't think to get rid of her accent, but she 
certainly spoke English well enough that I never saw within her an 
inability to communicate. I always understood her when she told me what 
to do. But that tone, that acceptance of the host country, America, and 
the need to honor that by learning the language of the country that 
received the immigrants, English. And in turn, this country has 
rewarded people who have learned the English language and assimilated 
themselves into this culture, because they are rewarded through the 
chain of commerce, the job opportunities that are there.
  And, yes, I know, I run into people that are entrepreneurs that 
didn't learn English and they did well marketing their goods and doing 
business. And they said, why did I learn English? I will say they could 
have done better than they did. A good person with English language 
skills in this country has an advantage over a good person without 
English language skills in this country. It is true in every culture 
and every civilization, if you speak the common language of the country 
that you are in, then you have an advantage when it comes to business, 
you have an advantage when it comes to education. In fact it is very, 
very difficult if not impossible to understand the history and the 
culture of America without understanding the language of this country. 
I don't know how that could be done without understanding the language 
of this country to understand it thoroughly. So I believe we need to 
establish English as the official language of the United States.
  This is not a unique concept to the rest of the world, Mr. Speaker. 
In fact, it is unique that we do not have an official language here in 
the United States.
  I sat down a few years ago and got down a world almanac. And if you 
turn to the page where the flags are, there is a flag for each of the 
countries in the world. And I sat next to me the ``World Book 
Encyclopedia,'' this is pre-digital era; now I would look it up on the 
Internet. But as I turned the pages through the ``World Book 
Encyclopedia,'' I looked up every country in the world, every country 
that had a flag registered in the ``World Almanac.'' And there in the 
``World Book Encyclopedia,'' in the first paragraph of the description 
of the countries it will show ``official language.'' I looked up the 
official language of every country in the world, and there was an 
official language, at least one, some have several, but at least one 
official language on record in the ``World Book Encyclopedia'' for 
every nation on this planet except the United States of America.
  So when we talk about establishing an official language here, 
English, the official language of the United States, and I hear people 
cry out that somehow that is a major inconvenience to people who come 
here speaking other languages and that we don't need an official 
language, that kind of argument defies the logic of the rest of the 
world. The logic of the rest of the world understands that there has to 
be official documents, there have to be official proceedings. There has 
to be an agreement on what language means. And if we will accept any 
language into our official activities here in the Federal Government, 
then we are forever litigating the differences between the 
interpretations of those languages.
  For example, let's just say that we had two people that came together 
and signed a contract, and one of them wanted that contract in 
Vietnamese and the other wanted the contract in Korean. And so they 
agreed verbally, even though they didn't communicate with each other 
because of a lack of the common language skill, that they would have a 
contract each in Korean and Vietnamese. And they each then signed the 
contract. The one provider who signed the contract was, let's say, the 
owner who was going to pay to have their house remodeled, they have a 
misunderstanding. And the contractor who adheres to the Korean language 
says: I have a disagreement; you've not upheld your end of this 
contract. And the owner, who might have this contract that he 
understands in Vietnamese, says: You have not held up your end of the 
contract.
  How do we litigate something like that within the courts of the 
United States of America when there is a disagreement on the 
interpretation between two languages that are not common languages in 
the United States but official languages of the countries where they 
came from? Can we be litigating those kind of disagreements? Or can we 
simply say, a contract with the Federal Government is an official 
document; it shall be in English. If you choose to interpret that into 
another language for the purposes of the utility of your needs, that is 
fine with us, but we aren't going to litigate the difference in the 
courts of America because of people who refuse to use the official 
language of the United States, which needs to be established as 
English. That is one explanation.
  Another explanation of this, of that need, would be, as I sat down 
with one of the ambassadors to the United States from Israel just a few 
years ago, he explained to the group, and if I remember correctly, it 
was the Policy Committee that was hosting the ambassador, that Israel 
had established Hebrew as the official language of Israel in 1954. Mr. 
Speaker, I would remind you that Israel was established as a nation in 
1948, and just 6 years after they became a nation, certainly they had 
war, they had turmoil, they were at great risk, but they were shaping 
and laying the foundations for a nation that was going to have enemies 
surrounding them in all directions.
  A very precarious spot for a nation to be in, the most important 
things needed to be focused upon, and the very best and most effective 
foundations for a nation needed to be laid, and yet just 6 years after 
they were established as a country they established Hebrew as the 
official language of Israel.
  And I asked the ambassador, Why did you do this? Why did you 
establish an

[[Page 32511]]

official language, and why did you choose Hebrew? And he said, We saw 
the success in the United States of assimilation from people all over 
the world coming into the United States and being accepted as 
Americans. We recognized that we were bringing refugees from all over 
the world, mostly Jews, to come live in Israel, reaching out to them; 
and they spoke languages from dozens of different countries and we 
didn't have a common language in Israel. We needed a language that 
bound us all together and identified us as Israelis and so we chose 
Hebrew.
  And I asked again, but why Hebrew? Hebrew had been the language that 
was used primarily and almost exclusively in prayer for the last 2,000 
years. The Israelis resurrected basically a dead language as far as 
street communication, business communication, commerce was concerned, 
and they brought Hebrew back up again and established it as the 
official language of their country and taught the Hebrew language to 
all Israelis. And today, as someone immigrates into Israel, they go to 
an assimilation center, I will call it; they have a different name 
which I don't recall, where they are taught in 6 months to learn the 
Hebrew language and to go out and function and perform within the 
broader society of Israel. So Israelis that learned Hebrew have that 
unique identifying quality. They can walk up to any other Israeli, 
speak to each other in Hebrew, and they will be bound together in the 
nation of Israel by that common language.
  And just as an aside, Mr. Speaker, those who come to Israel who come 
from countries where they may be illiterate in their native language, 
the Israelis then teach them to be literate in the written and spoken 
word of their native language, and then transition them into Hebrew, 
teaching them the written and the spoken language of Hebrew. That is 
about an 18-month process rather than the 6-month process of those who 
are literate in their own language who come into Israel and are taught 
Hebrew.
  They make this work. This is not a language that is known very much 
throughout the world. They resurrected a language that wasn't utilized, 
but they identified that a common language would bind people together 
in the nation state and that would help them work together and help 
them struggle together and help them fight together to defend 
themselves from their enemies from without. And one of the powerful, 
unifying forces they recognized was a common language.
  And, here in this country, we remain the only country in the world 
that doesn't have an official language. We say English is our common 
language, but we have forces out here seeking to subdivide us, and we 
have billions of dollars that flow out of this Congress that go into 
the hands of people who are promoting division in America and not unity 
in America. The message that many immigrants get when they arrive here 
in this country is, if you learn English, and this message is clearly 
given as part of the debate here on the floor, if you learn English, 
you give up your own culture. That is the message that we hear.
  Not true. In my neighborhood, I look around my neighborhood and 
certain communities that were ethnic enclaves when they were settled, 
German, Danish, Irish, Swedish, to name a few in my neighborhood, but 
the people that came here speaking a foreign language have adapted into 
English, and hardly any of them speak another language other than 
English that live there. But you could not convince them that they have 
given up their culture. You can't convince a German that their culture 
has changed dramatically because they have adhered to a common language 
here.
  Now, I think utilization of other languages and language skills are a 
good thing, and I encourage young people to study foreign languages. I 
use that in the analysis of culture and use that in trade and use that 
in foreign travel and use that to help open up our negotiations and 
discussions and reduce the friction and the conflict from nation to 
nation. Those are all good things. But a common language within a 
country binds it together, and accepting English as our official 
language means that the people who do so are tied more to a common 
sense of history, more to a common cause.
  As I listened to testimony that came before the small business 
community sometime back, we had a witness that came in who was second 
in command to Elaine Chao, the Department of Labor, and she testified 
that they had difficulty in finding enough workers who could go into a 
factory and be taught how to run the punch press or the lathe or common 
manufacturing equipment, not because they lacked the education and not 
because they lacked the intellectual ability, the brain power, so to 
speak, Mr. Speaker. No, because they lacked the language skills. They 
didn't understand enough English, so they couldn't be taught how to run 
a punch press or a lathe. They couldn't work in that environment 
because of the lack of language skills.
  And so I listened to that testimony and I said to the witness, I can 
understand why you would have that difficulty with first-generation 
immigrants. But can you tell me, do you encounter second-generation 
immigrants, people who were born in the United States of America, born 
into an English-speaking country, that haven't learned to speak 
English? Are they part of this problem? Do you run across those 
incidents? And into the Congressional Record she answered me, Yes, we 
do. We run into second-generation immigrants, native-born Americans 
that don't learn enough English to work in that factory. In fact, we 
have third-generation Americans that haven't learned enough English to 
go to work in these factories. And they are not included in the 
opportunities that are provided by the jobs in these regions because, 
if they haven't learned the language enough to work in the factory by 
three generations, now how do we convince the rest of the public and 
how am I to be convinced that they have assimilated into society, that 
they adhere to the American Dream, that they salute the flag and know 
the Pledge and say the Pledge?

                              {time}  1745

  How do we know that they would put on the uniform of this country and 
defend America? What would indicate to us that they have embraced this 
host Nation? If the grandchildren of the immigrants who move here don't 
learn English, what does that tell us about our society? Have we failed 
them? Have they failed us? I would submit, Mr. Speaker, it is some of 
each. They have failed to embrace this country and we have failed to 
set up a system that brings them in and welcomes them into our society 
and gives them the skills that allow them to be successful and feel 
they are part of this great Nation and part of this citizenship of 
being an American that is such a blessing.
  Another argument that argues compellingly for an official language 
here in the United States goes back to 245 B.C. That is before Christ, 
for those of you who are getting the modern-day education. So 245 B.C., 
the first emperor of China, and they have tried to teach me how to say 
that in Chinese. I have never learned, but it is Qin Shi Huangdi. So 
Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China, pronounced correctly by 
the Chinese, not by me, had a vision. He recognized that there were 
300-some provinces in China, separate regional areas. Certainly there 
were that many different colloquial languages that were in China.
  As he traveled around that part of the world that we see today as 
China, he recognized that they had a common culture. The Chinese 
people, as we know them today, wear similar clothing and have similar 
work habits. They had had similar religions across the spectrum to some 
degree, and yet they didn't speak a common language and so they 
couldn't communicate with each other, which means that they didn't 
trade and travel. And when enemies came from without, they were not 
able to organize themselves to defend themselves from within because 
they didn't have the communication skills and ability to speak a common 
language.
  So the first emperor of China looked about and decided I am going to 
establish a common language for China. He hired a group of scribes, 
scholars of the

[[Page 32512]]

day, and said go to work and write a common language. I want all of the 
Chinese people to be able to communicate in the same language.
  The scribes sat down and drafted this language, and the language that 
was created by the scribes under the first emperor of China is a 
language that has about 5,000 commonly used characters, about 50,000 
out at the limits of the expanse of the varieties of the characters, 
picture words is how they have put that together, and I can't begin to 
understand it, but I can tell you that the common language that was 
created, especially the written language of the Chinese, has bound them 
together. They recognize the writing and they can read script that 
comes from any corner of the country.
  So 245 B.C. is about the era that this began, and the first emperor 
of China's vision was to unite the Chinese people for the next 10,000 
years. For the next 10,000 years. What a dream. We are about a fourth 
of the way through that and there is no sign that the Chinese people 
are going to be ununited or disunited. And yes, they have different 
versions of the Chinese language that they do speak on the continent. 
Cantonese and Mandarin come to mind, but the written language is the 
same. And the literate Chinese can read and write it. And it has to be 
hard to put those pictures together on a Chinese keyboard today, but 
they do it. And they are bound together as one people.
  And the vision of the first emperor of China was that he saw some 
other commonalities that he wanted to establish. Also, there were 
sections of the Great Wall of China that were not connected, and so the 
invaders from without could go around the wall and come in. The first 
emperor of China connected the sections of the walls of China so it 
became one Great Wall instead of disconnected sections of the wall.
  And he established the terra-cotta guards. He also recognized the 
widths of the ox carts weren't the same and so the ruts would put 
stress on the wheels and you might break a wheel. He standardized the 
axle spacing of the ox carts so they could travel and do commerce. He 
had a vision, a standardization.
  Imagine a train, an engine and a set of cars of a train that has a 
different width of track. When you reach another set of track, you have 
to off-load your cargo and put it on a car that will travel on that 
different width.
  What would it be like if every State in the Union had a different 
width for the railcars? It would debilitate rail travel, so we 
standardize it. We have one gauge of track that takes you anywhere in 
the United States of America.
  We have had one language that takes you anywhere in the United States 
of America, until such time as the multiculturalists cut loose here in 
the last 20 to 30 years and began to try to convince people, don't 
assimilate into this culture, just simply hang onto the culture you 
brought with you and dig yourself in in an ethnic enclave and raise two 
and three and maybe even a fourth generation of people whose hope lies 
within the enclave and not with the Nation outside the enclave.
  It doesn't make sense, Mr. Speaker, for us not to have an official 
language here in the United States because an official language 
provides a motivation and an incentive for all regions of the country 
to adapt themselves to an official language.
  If they do that, then they will be teaching English within the 
enclaves in America, the places where I can't go to communicate with 
anybody anymore. And why do I, in the heartland of America, need to 
walk into a bank or convenience store and get out my card at an ATM, 
and I stick my card in there and the first question it asks me is: What 
language do you want to communicate in? I have to read all of that. If 
I read it from the bottom to the top, it will burn up to 7 or 8 seconds 
until I get to the top. Then I push the English button and wait for the 
transaction to light up the screen. If you push the button wrong, you 
have to start guessing again to back out of it.
  Because we provide multiple languages on street signs or multiple 
languages on ATMs and multiple languages on directions, it doesn't help 
people have an incentive to learn English.
  Mr. Speaker, it works like this. If I pull up to a stop sign in 
Kuwait and in Arabic it says ``stop'' and in English it says ``stop,'' 
my eyes go to the language that I understand. No matter how hard I try 
to memorize what ``stop'' looks like in Arabic, I am never going to 
learn Arabic because it is always there enabling me to take the English 
way out, the easy way out, the part that I know.
  And if we provide ATMs in foreign languages, I don't have a law that 
bans that. That is a free commerce idea. Please do what you want to do, 
bankers. If I have a choice, I will go to the ATM that gives it to me 
only in English because I don't want the confusion. But that is a free 
market plan. I don't disagree with that, but I am making the point that 
multiple language availability does nothing but enable people to 
continue living in the enclave and not assimilate and learn the 
language.
  So official documents and proceedings here in the United States need 
to be in English. I ask the States to establish and pass the same kind 
of policy. And there are nearly 30 States that do have English as the 
official language. Iowa is one of them. I did spend 6 years 
establishing English as the official language of the State of Iowa. 
That requires that all official documents and official proceedings be 
in English. And it has commonsense exceptions like justice. You 
wouldn't lock up a criminal if they didn't understand the charges 
against them. We would provide health care to people regardless of 
whether they understood the language or not.
  We do provide driver's license tests in at least six different 
languages. I disagree with that. I do believe that should not be an 
exception. But regardless, that is the policy that is out there. A 
number approaching and maybe actually meeting 30 States have English as 
the official language in one form or another to pull people together, 
to bind us together, not to divide us apart.
  And the effort to divide constantly comes from this side of the aisle 
and it pits Americans against Americans. But we understand that the 
official language is inclusive not exclusive. Every nation in the world 
has an official language except the United States because it 
understands the unifying power of a common language.
  The polls support this. You can look at polls that show from 82 
percent of Americans support English as the official language on up to 
88 percent of Americans support English as the official language.
  English is a common form of communications currency in this country 
and in business and in air traffic control and in politics and in 
maritime industry throughout the world. We need to establish it here 
because holding that principle together sends the message to people who 
come here that this Congress, this Nation, the majority of the States 
from within, expect you to learn English.
  They come here expecting to learn English. None of us go to a foreign 
country and seek to impose our language on the government of a foreign 
country. If I walk into a service in France, I will have to be doing 
business with them in French. They don't feel compelled to pay for my 
interpreter or to print road signs in languages in France other than 
French.
  But one might take a look up to Quebec, a province in Canada, to give 
some instruction on what happens when a society is split apart by 
competing languages. Cultures follow down the line of language. When 
you speak a common language, it pulls your culture together. When you 
can't communicate with each other, it divides the culture.
  So the French speakers in Quebec have been insistent that they 
continue speaking French. When you go into Quebec in those regions, the 
street signs are in French. There have been two votes in my memory, and 
one of them I believe was about a decade ago, where Quebec voted on 
whether to secede from the rest of Canada. And thinking about that, it 
was the Quebecois who had the decision to make. It wasn't put out for 
the rest of

[[Page 32513]]

Canada, just the Quebecois. They came within less than 1 percentage 
point of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. Had they done that, 
they would have effectively separated Canada into three separate 
geographical regions. Everything west of Quebec to the Pacific Ocean 
would have been a region, Quebec itself a separate region, and the 
maritime provinces on the east side a separate region. The English-
speaking components of Canada would have been the east and west, and in 
the heart would have been Quebec, the French-speaking province. They 
came within less than 1 percentage point of seceding Quebec from the 
rest of Canada. And why? Because they insisted upon not speaking a 
common language of the nation that they were part of, Canada.
  If you ask anybody in Canada that lived through that era and asked 
them if English had been the official language of Canada from its 
beginning, had been the language of educational instruction and science 
and technology and business in all of Canada, the remnants of the 
French language would have persisted and it would have existed within 
the culture and been part of the conversational language going on in 
Quebec, but it wouldn't have been a political divider. The wedge that 
came down between the Canadians was a wedge driven exactly along the 
lines of language because the lines of language define the lines of 
culture, and it separated people politically and pitted them against 
each other.
  If they only communicated in a common language, all French or all 
English, there never would have been a vote that came up before the 
Canadian people, and the risk of that nation being fractured apart 
would never have been faced by the voters. There is always a movement 
by Quebec separatists, but it seems to have been tamped down recently. 
But language is the fault line. If you want to erase fault lines in 
nations, you need a common language for the nation.
  So I will make the point, there has never been a successful 
multilingual nation in the history of the world. The Soviet Union would 
be a very good example of this. The Soviet Union was put together and 
cobbled together by force, by military force, by economic leverage. We 
looked at all of the different regions of the Soviet bloc, and I grew 
up living with that and doing the air raid drills at the same time, 
watching the Soviet Union and the distinctions between Russia and the 
balance of the Soviet satellite states.
  If you look at those satellite states today after the wall came down 
on November 9, 1989, we saw freedom echoed across Eastern Europe all of 
the way to the Pacific Ocean, losing some of that today, it appears, in 
Russia. But the Nations that spun themselves off were nations that were 
distinct by language. The languages in the Baltic states re-established 
some of their languages as their official language. They were trying to 
impose Russian on them, and the Baltic states rejected that to some 
degree.

                              {time}  1800

  They've gone back and re-established their native languages as their 
official language. It binds them together as a people. Polish binds the 
Poles together. Bulgarian, well, that's another subject. But if we go 
down into a place like Kurdistan, they speak a distinct language. The 
languages again are the defined borders of the nation states that 
emerged when they broke away from the Soviet bloc after the wall came 
down in 1989. This is a simple concept to understand in history. If you 
watch the map change, of the world, watch it change historically, and 
as that map changes, ask yourselves, what are these lines? Are they 
lines of language? Generally, they are. The lines of language generally 
match the lines of culture. And if we can speak a common language, it 
binds us together as a common people.
  And so H.R. 997, English is the official language, is a piece of 
legislation that establishes English as the official language of the 
United States of America. It requires that all official activities and 
documents of the government be in English, and provides commonsense 
exceptions so that we can continue to do business in this country 
without confusion, without lack of communication, and still, at the 
same time, we make those exceptions so that no one is disenfranchised 
that is in this country, at least legally, and has a legal access to 
some of those benefits.
  I think about another form of history, or another experience in 
history that has to do with the Spaniards as they arrived in the New 
World and down into the Central American region. And if you remember, 
as the conquistadores moved their way northward, they went on into the 
areas of southern Arizona, as we know it today, the Pueblo Indian area. 
And there you had the Zunis, the Hopis and the Anasazi Native Americans 
that were in that region. They come to mind as I look back upon the 
history because, as the Spaniards invaded into that territory and as 
they came into the communities, the settlements, the Indian villages, 
it was easy for them to take on one village and raid that village and 
destroy the opposition within the village and enslave the balance of 
the Native Americans that were not killed in the invasion and the 
occupation of the villages.
  And the Spanish conquistadores could go, in the 1500s, they could go 
from village to village. And even though those neighborhoods were 
common in culture, the Native Americans in that region wore similar 
clothing, ate similar foods, had similar habits and practices and 
similar work habits, they didn't speak a common language because they 
lived in enclaves. They hadn't traveled and traded. Because they didn't 
interchange their cultures, because they didn't have a common language, 
the Spanish were able to divide and conquer the Native Americans in 
that region in southern Arizona in the 1500s, the Zunis, the Hopis, and 
the Anasazis, and perhaps others.
  But as the Native Americans were enslaved by the Spaniards, they were 
taken into the missions and there they were converted to Christianity 
and they were taught Spanish. They imposed the Spanish language on the 
Native Americans in the southern parts of Arizona.
  And guess what happened, Mr. Speaker? The Native Americans, the 
Zunis, the Hopis and the Anasazis, they figured out that now they had a 
lingua franca, they had a common language, the common language being 
Spanish which was taught to them and imposed upon them within the 
missions in the southern part of the United States; and because now 
they had a common language they could bind together, maybe they came 
together, and they threw the Spanish out. For decades they kept the 
Spanish out of that region and they defended their own neighborhood and 
their own country because they had learned something from being 
occupied, and that was they learned a common language. Even though it 
wasn't their native language, it was the language of their conquerors, 
they adopted and adapted to the Spanish language and used that common 
language, that common form of communication as currency, a lingua 
franca, to throw out their oppressors and their invaders and live free 
for decades and some will say perhaps as long as 200 years before the 
Spanish were able to impose their will again on the Native Americans of 
that region.
  That's a piece of history that's hard to find. It's hard to find a 
place to read. It's hard to find something to study on it. It's a 
component that I think is quite interesting and instructive.
  A common language binds us together. It lets us communicate for a 
common cause. It's going to move this Nation forward and make us more 
successful than we have been in the past. It preserves our culture, our 
history, our heritage. It gives us a common experience. It ties us to 
our history, and it lets an American go from corner to corner, from 
Maine to California and from Washington to Florida, and pick up a 
newspaper or walk into a store or a church or a park or a school or 
anywhere and be able to communicate in a common form of communications 
currency, at least with government. And if government uses the common 
form, the incentive will be there for others to use that common form.

[[Page 32514]]

  It doesn't discourage learning other languages. I encourage that we 
learn other languages in order to communicate with other countries. But 
to be a foreigner, to be a stranger in your homeland, to go to a region 
of America that 50 years ago was an English-speaking region and today, 
where people do not speak English, within the United States of America, 
tells me that we haven't done the job of assimilation. We haven't found 
the formula to promote this inclusiveness that's necessary to bind us 
together with the common form of communications currency.
  And so the bill establishes English as the official language. It's 
very simple. It says, official language of the United States. The 
Federal Government shall have an affirmative obligation to preserve and 
enhance the role of English as the official language of the Federal 
Government. And the official functions of government are to be 
conducted in English. Official functions of the Government of the 
United States shall be in English. And then the practical exceptions 
that I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker, are exceptions for the teaching 
of languages, any requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities 
Education Act, any actions, documents or policies necessary for 
national security, for international relations, trade, tourism or 
commerce, all excepted within the bill. It has exceptions of language 
requirements for documents that protect the public health and safety of 
the United States, or any documents that facilitate the activities of 
the census.
  We need to be able to count people here. And any actions that protect 
the rights of victims of crimes or their defendants, the legal portion 
of this, and then any use of terms or art or phrases from languages 
other than English, and certainly, that would include the geographical 
regions like Iowa; that's a Native American name.
  And so we also have a requirement here in the United States that if 
you're to be naturalized as an American citizen, you have an 
obligation, an affirmative obligation to demonstrate proficiency in 
both written and the spoken English language. And as I watch some of 
the naturalization ceremonies that we have, and I speak at a number of 
them, and I watch the reactions of those being naturalized, if I tell a 
joke in a speech in that environment, Mr. Speaker, those that get the 
joke laugh. And those that don't understand the language do not. It 
tells me that we really don't have a very high standard in requiring 
proficiency in English in order to be naturalized as an American 
citizen.
  That is the law, Mr. Speaker. And the law is written with a vision in 
mind that we need to be bound together as one people. So I am here to 
endorse H.R. 997, English as the official language. It will bind us 
together as one people. It will give us a common form of communications 
currency. It will make us a stronger and better Nation and a stronger 
and better people for generations to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time.

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