Downtown Frederick, Md. (Photo by RehanBashir.com)
You stay classy, Maryland exurbs.
Frederick County’s Board of County Commissioners approved an ordinance yesterday making English the official language for nearly all local government functions. Other languages will only be permitted for issues of public health or safety.
The official language thing is running around in Maryland this year, giving a new boost of energy to the old canard that if we just stop printing official documents in more than one language we’ll fix our immigration issues in a jiffy. It’s especially resurgent with a presidential campaign going on—Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have both included making English the official language of the United States in their platforms, with Gingrich, somewhat characteristically, even calling Spanish the “language of the ghetto.”
Back in Frederick County, Board President Blaine Young told WTOP, “If you would stop anyone on the streets, anywhere, and ask them what is the official language of the United States, they would say English.”
Perhaps “they” might say that, but one of the ordinance’s opponents told the board yesterday that wasn’t always the case for Frederick County, where the first settlers in the early 19th century were mostly German speakers. Newspapers and community notices appeared in both German and English, Meredith Kelly, the anti-ordinance advocate, said.
Nowadays, though, it appears Frederick County’s overseers have a different idea: “”We are not going to spend taxpayer dollars to produce official documents in other languages except English,” Young told WTOP. The measure passed on a 4-1 vote. Along with exception for public health and safety, the promotion of trade and tourism could be in languages other than English. (“Vengan a Frederick County, donde no se habla español!” seems like an odd tourism pitch.)
Elsewhere in Maryland, Anne Arundel County is also rumbling around the official-language issue. The argument there is the same as in Frederick County—more English, fewer pesky immigrants. The Baltimore Sun, in a recent editorial, found the notion risible:
County Councilman Jerry Walker wants to make English the official language of Anne Arundel County. That would make perfect sense if English weren’t already, for all practical purposes, the county’s official language. When was the last time you heard someone complain they couldn’t read a county parking ticket or other official document because it was written in Urdu or Farsi?
The fact that this never occurs ought to be a clue: This is not serious legislation but rather a piece of political theater that would achieve nothing more than puffing up the councilman’s reputation among the anti-immigrant crowd. It amounts to a wholly unnecessary, mean-spirited swipe at Hispanic residents that will intimidate people regardless of whether they’re in the country legally or not. And it will do nothing to improve county governance or to alter the already existing federal and state guidelines requiring government documents to be written in additional languages.
And that’s just the lede. But the English-only rule is now the law of Frederick County, where the official slogan is now “Talk American or GTFO.”*
*Not really, but that’s the message, right?
