Immigration rallies' backlash, cont'd: English as America's national language

The backlash against the recent open borders rallies continues. Yesterday, the US Senate passed a provision authorizing English as America's "national language." Making English the nation's official language would've been better, but even as a national language, the legislation makes sense. It will be included, along with a similar provision, in the immigration legislation making its way through Congress.

Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma brought the provision to the Senate floor.

The usual suspects, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Patty Murray, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, among others, voted against it.

But I want to focus on the comments made by Dick Durbin.

He's worried that warning signs in Spanish might be taken down.

From the Chicago Tribune, free registration may be required:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), for example, said drowning deaths on the Potomac River, which flows through the nation's capital, had gone from more than a dozen in 2004 to none last year. The U.S. Park Service credited the decline, he said, to warning signs in Spanish and English after it noticed that many drowning victims were immigrants.

"So is making this political statement in the Inhofe amendment so important that we wouldn't want to provide safety for those using the Potomac River?" Durbin asked.

Inhofe responded that his bill would not prevent such signs from being printed in other languages in addition to English.

Whereas I'm glad there were no drowning deaths on the Potomac last year, I find it not at all surprising that Durbin framed the debate over the provision in a manner that a trial lawyer would. The trial lawyers are the ones who tell juries that not no matter what warning signs are put in place, they're never enough of them, they're never big enough, and they're not in enough languages.

Of course, over the last twenty years, the Democratic Party has become the party of the trial lawyers.

The photograph was taken at the Chicago May 1 immigration rally by Jake of Freedom Folks.

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