If you go to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s website, SBA.gov, you’ll see a “Translate” button in the upper right-hand corner. Proceed to the drop-down menu and click on one of the many languages there and soon you’ll be reading — or gazing at — the same SBA material in Greek, Italian, Yiddish, Malay or Maltese, among other possibilities.

We consider the translation service a neat use of advanced technology. Unfortunately, that’s not the view of those pushing legislation to make English the nation’s official language so that all “official functions” of government are conducted only in English.

They’d outlaw that “translate” option. Indeed, their definition of “official” includes “any function that … is otherwise subject to scrutiny by either the press or the public” — so goodbye to the translation software.

The English Language Unity Act is the sort of bill that probably sounds appealing to many voters but that mostly fails to address their actual concerns. For example, some voters no doubt worry about whether immigrants are assimilating fast enough to preserve a common American culture. We think the answer is yes, but even if we’re wrong, this bill won’t really help.

How could it?

The fact that a significant portion of kids in early grades in Denver and other school districts across the country can’t speak English, for example, has essentially nothing to do with government conducting a minor amount of business in some non- English language. Nor is it because government “spends billions for multilingual translations, printing costs, and miscommunications,” as the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, complains.

Those kids can’t speak English because they come from families that were part of a major — and yes, mostly illegal — influx of immigrants in the past generation and therefore speak another language at home. With or without the English Language Unity Act, those children will still have to be taught English in the manner they are today.

The bill has more than 100 House sponsors, and may get a hearing in the near future in the Judiciary Committee.

To become citizens, legal immigrants face a test of English proficiency as well as a civics test on their knowledge of U.S. history and government. However, this official English bill requires that new citizens “be able to read and understand generally the English language text of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the laws of the United States,” and orders Homeland Security to write new testing rules.

If Congress wants to toughen the English-language requirement for naturalization, so be it. That may be desirable. But it is really necessary that newcomers master 18th century patterns of speech as well?

The English Language Unity Act is a badly flawed bill that should never make it into law.

— The Denver Post

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