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H.R. 997, The English Language Unity Act of 2007 (15 comments ↓)
H.R. 997 would declare English as the official language of the United States, establish a uniform English language rule for naturalization, and avoid misconstructions of the English language texts of the laws of the United States, pursuant to Congress' powers to provide for the general welfare of the United States and to establish a uniform rule of naturalization under article I, section 8, of the Constitution.
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Visitor Comments
R. Weidman
We need to get HR 997 Passed ASAP.
Only congress could play football with gettin English as our national language year after year.
NYC Officer
HR 997 is long overdue. The United States are no longer united. Our country as we know will soon cease to exist. The only reason there is even a need for this bill is the millions of illegal (and legal) immigrants who no longer want to learn english.
Business Owner
Why should I have to press one for English? This whole English language thing is ridiculous. This is the USA, we speak English, if you don't like that, leave.
US Soldier
What's the big deal? Are we that afraid of non-english speakers? I know for a fact that my ancestors did NOT speak english when they arrived in this country hundreds of years ago. This is absurd and only feeds an elitist mentality.
Should it be American English then? Should we chastise people for not speaking it, or writing it correctly? Or is that next? Most of our own citizens wouldn't even be able to pass that test!
Engineer
English is the common language of this country. People are free to speak what ever they want, but official business and commerce are to be conducted in English.
Naturalized Citizen
English was not my native language. My parents knew that I would have to know and use English in order to succeed in life. When I became a US citizen in 1982, I had to take a literacy test. I do not know if they are still required.
I am all for people being able to speak in any language that they choose, but when dealing with the government at any level, there should only be English. Drivers tests and voting should be only in English too. You would not expect Mexico to provide multiple languages - why should we?
American Teenager
English should be the national language. Like Canada, we are a former English colony and should continue to use our historic language. The founding fathers didn't write the Constitution in multiple languages. We are ment to speak English and any newcomers should understand and respect that.
P. Officer Sanchez, USN
When examining this law, don't take the reason why this law was proposed out of the coversation. This is an attempt by those congressman and senators to continue bringing fear and division into politics. The United States didn't have a declared official language since its creation. People that don't know English will continue learning English with or without this law, the only difference is that people will use the passage of this law as an excuse to treat them like dogs regarless of their positive contribution to the USA.
just a thought
I have just one question. What will the government do with citizens who are unable to speak or pass and English Language proficiency test, not because they didn't learn English, but because they had a stroke (CVA) or another disease process? Will their citizenship also be revoked? Make no mistake, HR 997 is not the way intelligent US citizens should vote. It only makes an acceptace of "limited language knowledge" officially valid. Our children need to know how to work with people from all over the world, whether they speak English or not.
LK from KS
Star
Way past time for it.Just because English would the the official language doesn't mean there wouldn't be other languages spoken.
RL Close
What a morning: called for technical help and could not understand any of the 3 cust.service reps who "spoke English". Called to arrange shipping of a pallet of goods required three separate "push one for English" on the way to a cust.service rep who couldn't. I stopped for groceries and the signs were in Spanish, secondly in English. This would be an unusual day except that it is now the norm. An English-speaking American has to waste hours every week to accomodate a growing population of mostly illegal immigrants who are just too lazy to integrate themselves into an English-speaking society. If we don't do something to encourage unified communication we will soon be as divided a nation as Europe was. I just looked again at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and it was amazing to see that it was only written in English. They must have been politically incorrect when they set off on the path to form a more perfect union.
Joan Vincent
English is the official language of the United States. However, we must make it official on paper since illegal immigrants, as well as other groups of people who wish to weaken the unity of this country for their own reasons, continue to use the fact that no document exists as a way of attempting to label the majority of Americans as racist and unreasonable. We need to get HR997 passed and put it behind us.
The dumbing down of America
No to this ridiculous farce. I guess most of us have forgotten what happened to our real Native languages. Some 600 languages were literally beaten out of our Native people during the 20th century in boarding and reservation schools. Most of those languages don't even exist any more, and have no fluent speakers. The U.S. will be the big loser if this passes--study after study has shown that bi- and tri-lingual people have higher IQs.
Striker
I think it all horse tihs also. these foriegners come into our country we're not going into theirs. also Is anyone going to say anything about all the senators that voted against the bill? two of which are our Democratic Presidential Wannabe's.
English education is really what we need
English is already generally accepted as the official language of America. Enacting a law that reinforces that fact sends many negative messages, and simply making it official doesn't necessarily ensure that more immigrants will learn English. What we really need is a better system for teaching English instead of legislation that only contains ideologies.