Immigration has been a hotly debated topic this year; not only in the U.S. Senate, but all throughout the country. During this past month certain news stories related to immigration motivated me to think and write about issues such as the movement to make English the official language of the United States and even issues that have been debated in the past, like bilingual education, because these subjects are closely related to raising bilingual or multilingual children.

When I was an English major in Brazil and studied the history of the English language during my senior year, I was surprised to find out that several states in this country treated immigrants very harshly regarding the issue of language, forbidding them and their children to speak their native languages in school and even in churches and other places. On June 4th, the New York Times published a story precisely about this. The article explored how children of French immigrants in Maine were forbidden to speak French in school in the 1950s and 60s and how now the French language is having a comeback in that state and children and grandchildren of French immigrants are learning it. It seems contradictory that in spite of all these efforts to curb foreign languages in the past and present, the United States does not have an official language; a fact that I was very surprised to learn and which is the main motivation for the continued interest and support to the English-only movement.

I live in Philadelphia and last week I was driving around listening to the locally produced NPR station (WHHY) program “Radio Times,” with Marty Moss-Coane. She was talking about the English-only movement and the bills that have been passed in the Senate recently and she interviewed Joey Vento, the owner of the well-known Philly cheese steak restaurant Geno’s Steaks, who put a sign in his store saying “This Is AMERICA. Please WHEN ORDERING SPEAK ENGLISH.” Mr. Vento’s argument is that “we should encourage immigrants to speak English because that’s the path to the American Dream.” As a grandchild of Italian immigrants, Joey Vento argues that most immigrants cannot succeed unless they learn English and that his own grandparents could have achieved more if they had learned the language.

One of the first things Mr. Vento said in the interview, paraphrasing President Roosevelt, was: “Any man who says he’s an American but something else also isn’t an American at all. We have room for the one flag, and that’s the American flag, we have room for the one language here and that’s English, room for one loyalty, and this is loyalty to America. 1907 – Theodore Roosevelt. That’s where I got the sign to put out here.” I immediately thought of my sons when I heard this. Kelvin is very proud to tell people that he has two passports, an American and a Brazilian one. At the young age of four he already knows that he belongs to two countries. My first reaction to what Mr. Vento said was – wait a minute, if the United States and other countries allow people to maintain dual citizenship, then these people certainly have the right to keep their language and culture and still be fully American. Then I thought some more. Could my family be criticized because we are raising our American and Brazilian sons to speak Portuguese first?

Speaking a foreign language in the home seems to be no issue to most Hispanic families in this country. They just do it naturally, and all the children of Spanish speaking parents I know speak Spanish fluently. Consequently, the prevalence of the Spanish language in this ever-growing immigrant ethnic group scares many American citizens and policy makers who not only want to make immigration more difficult, but also seek for legal ways to ensure English’s position as the official language of the country. In the aforementioned New York Times article, the people in Maine who were forced to stop speaking French in school and who decided not to raise their children as French speakers feel sad about their decision now. Many of them are making great efforts to re-learn it themselves and to send their children to French speaking schools so they can rescue their language and cultural heritage. Fortunately, it seems to be working and, in the case of Maine, it does help that the state – who once shunned the French immigrants – now celebrates and supports them. It is still the case, though, that many families of working class immigrants simply do not have the energy or resources to ensure that their children learn the parents’ languages and cultures -my next door Indian and Bangladeshi neighbors, whose boys only speak English, come to my mind at this point.

Another issue that saddens me tremendously is the dismantling of the bilingual education programs in states like Massachusetts where my brother-in-law used to teach math and science in Portuguese to Brazilian elementary school students and in English to ESL students from other countries. He was referred to the job by another friend of ours who for several years taught first grade entirely in Portuguese to a class-full of Brazilian immigrant children, many of them born in the United States. People like Mr. Vento argue that government-sponsored programs catering to immigrant populations providing information and education in their languages only hinder their command of English. In his opinion, which is probably shared by many people, when these “crutches” are taken away, the immigrants are forced to learn English and have more chances to succeed. This kind of reasoning has ultimately led to the phasing out of bilingual education programs in states such as Massachusetts and California and threats to eliminate other programs that involve multilingual aid to immigrants.

I think it is very sad when the children of foreign immigrants are stripped of their languages and cultures and have to experience a hard time adapting to school. What about the older people who cannot receive adequate health care or legal assistance if there are no forms and printed material in their languages? Older people find it much harder to learn English and many just don’t. There was a heartbreaking story in the New York Times a few months ago about a Chinese man, an undocumented immigrant, who was so afraid to seek treatment for his illness that he sought Chinese healers and subsequently died. Language and culture may not always constitute matters of life and death, but it is still a great loss when a child or grandchild of immigrants cannot speak his or her parents’ and grandparents’ language and fully enjoy their culture.

It is remarkable to me and quite contradictory as well that these arguments about English-only and changes to educational policies that foster bilingualism/ multilingualism come at a time when most everyone agrees that multilingualism is actually a key to success in today’s globalized world. As Ms. Moss-Coane emphasized in the Radio Times program I quoted above, it is important to acknowledge that there are more job opportunities for people who are fully bi- or multi-lingual in today’s economy. Therefore, it is quite useful when immigrant children remain fluent in their family’s language. On the one hand the United States finds itself pulled by the internationalization of industry and the global economy which require translators and multilingual personnel, but on the other hand the population at home seems to have become more and more protective of its language and culture. Perhaps this is just one more of the consequences of 9/11/2002. Those terrible events seem to have forever changed this country’s and probably the world’s cultural landscape.

In a way, I understand why English speakers and language “purists” would feel threatened by the “invasion” of foreign languages in this country and try to curb the evasion of the tax-payers’ dollars into government-sponsored programs that foster the maintenance of multilingualism, even though I would counter argue that most of these very immigrants (even the undocumented ones) do pay taxes as well. In next month’s column I am going to write about how I sometimes feel threatened as well by the English language, fearing that it will eventually overcome Portuguese in my sons’ lives. In that way I feel I can understand a little why an English speaker would feel threatened by a foreign language like mine. In my opinion, however, this threat is not a good reason to fight against the maintenance of these foreign languages – particularly in the lives of American-born children like my sons whom I fell have every right in the world to be Brazilian and speak Portuguese even though they were born here.

This is why it is wonderful to know that there are sites like this one dedicated to multilingualism and to helping families to remain or to become bi- or multi- lingual and cultural. I do not feel lonely anymore in my endeavor to bring up my sons bilingually and, why not, multilingually since we are exposed to other languages, such as Spanish, in our community. Thinking about these issues made me realize that there are compelling arguments in favor of multilingualism and multiculturalism, even though many people in this country may not be on our side at the moment. So, using yet another language that I am fortunate enough to have made the acquaintance of: Vive la différence!

Lilian would love to hear your stories and opinions about these issues. You can email her at: lilianpw@gmail.com.

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Lilian W. is a monthly contributing editor and columnist for the Multilingual Living Magazine. She is a foreign student from Brazil currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation in the humanities. She and her husband speak Portuguese at home with their sons, but she is hoping they will start learning English soon. Check out her family’s journey in her One Family One Language column each month. You can learn more about Lilian at her blog: http://mamaintranslation.blogspot.com.

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