0 comment Sunday, September 14, 2014 | admin
Fight over English-only bill rages in Nashville
NASHVILLE, TENN. � The "Friendliest City in America" finds itself in a nasty fight and the national glare because of a language issue tied to illegal immigration.
A recent City Council bill requiring Nashville to conduct business solely in English was quickly trumped by the mayor's veto. But the free-for-all continues, haunting tourism and business officials who fear it will tarnish the city's Southern image.
"We are the friendliest city in America," said Mayor Bill Purcell, who's spending the last of eight years in office. "It is a part of who and what we are. We encourage people to come for the weekend, a week or the rest of their lives. And this law was directly contrary to that."
Councilman Eric Crafton said his bill would force non-English speakers to learn the language faster. He acknowledges that Nashville already conducts business in English but invokes the illegal immigration shadow by saying that the policy could change, because the U.S. government hasn't halted the flow of undocumented workers.
[...]Both sides in the bitter fight agree on just two things: Frustration over illegal immigration from Spanish-speaking countries is behind the support for the bill � and the bill wouldn't have done a thing about that anyway.
Regardless, local bloggers now vent over illegal immigration in vitriolic and emotional Internet posts about the bill. Much of it focuses on preserving a way of life.
With his veto, the mayor of the nation's country music capital was "caving in to those who wish to change our state instead of those who wish to preserve it!" read a post on the Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies Web site.
"We have to take back our community and our country somewhere," a resident of nearby Hermitage told a local newspaper.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce has called the bill "an official policy by Nashville against inclusiveness." But the organization also felt the need to add that it's firmly against illegal immigration.
[...]
The local Roman Catholic bishop, David R. Choby, stood in support with Purcell as he made the veto announcement. "The characteristics of kindness, for which this city has developed a national recognition, can also be called Christian charity," he said.
Aimed at Hispanics
The factor unmentioned in the bill is the Spanish-speaking immigrants, whose growing presence across the South during this decade has triggered cultural change and unease.
Nashville is home to the nation's largest Kurdish community and large numbers of immigrants from Southeast Asia and Africa, but the controversy has ignored them in comparison.
In recent years, Nashville's immigrant population has swelled, drawn by service industry and construction growth and other parts of a healthy economy. As of 2000, about 29,000 residents, or 5 percent of the total, were Hispanic, and a language other than English was spoken in one in 10 Nashville homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
First of all, it distresses me very much that an iconic city like Nashville, which represents country music, that most American of all musical genres, is now on its way to being another polyglot slum. And it dumbfounds me that Nashville has the largest Kurdish colony in the United States. And please: I don't want to hear about how the Kurds are our allies, our friends, our helpers in Iraq. We have heard the same story about the Hmongs and how we 'owe' them for helping us in Southeast Asia. So anybody who helps us is now entitled to the run of our country, and their extended families too? Enough is enough.
Why can't we just declare some city to be an American City, to be preserved as a kind of museum piece, so that future generations will know about that quaint old English-speaking country called the U.S.A.? Or is this country going to be turned into a coast-to-coast Tijuana before we even know what hit us?
Whenever these stories appear in the MSM, there is the now-familiar cast of characters: the pandering city officials squaring off against the citizenry, and taking the side of the illegals, and then the goody-two-shoes liberal clergy, with their pious cant about 'welcoming' the poor immigrants. Where are the city officials who will show some integrity and some loyalty to their country, their people, their rightful constituents? Are they all open-borders whores? Thank goodness there are still a few like Mayor Lou Barletta, the feisty mayor of the besieged town of Hazleton, PA, to provide us an example of what real leaders should be.
But we need to replace a lot of these sorry leaders who are selling us out for the thirty pieces of silver, or for the sake of the 'Hispanic vote' or the Kurdish vote or for the sake of 'business' or whatever.
I really had hopes of spending the last years of my life somewhere in the Southeast; not too many years ago, before 9/11 jarred me out of my slumber, I truly thought that, although Texas was being overrun by illegals, the rest of the Southern states still retained their unique, traditional character; my ideal was to live out my years in some small town, among like-minded folk, especially having spent much time in large urban centers up North. Who could have imagined that even the Southeast, and a quintessential American town like Nashville would be in the crosshairs of the diversity Nazis and the illegal invaders?
Everybody who knows me knows that I was always a lover of travel, always interested in other cultures, languages, and experiences. But when diversity became compulsory, when it became enforced and coerced by soulless bureaucrats -- or by arrogant invaders who unilaterally decided our country belonged to them -- I suddenly lost my taste for that 'diversity'. If that makes me xenophobic, so be it. Nobody has a right to change the population and the culture of an established community into something utterly different. Such an imposition is not in any way compatible with freedom.
'Diversity' (how I've learned to loathe the sound of that word!) must be self-chosen, voluntary. Nobody has a right to force it on another individual or even less, on an entire country. Those of us who liked 'diversity' occasionally could travel to experience it. That's the best way to experience 'diversity', because then you can choose just what variety of it you like, and sample it in an exotic setting. Heck, that was the main motivator to travel, for me: the idea of a change of scene, different people, varied sights, sounds, smells. But when all the diversity is being jumbled together and dumped unceremoniously on our doorstep, it somehow loses its appeal. When the element of choice is denied us, then it becomes an injustice.
Now, what's the point of travel, if we encounter the same disparate, mismatched collection of peoples wherever we go? These days, when I am in an airport, I can hardly tell where I am; whether in Houston or Newark or Seattle, with the same lumpen 'diversity' everywhere. Each city, each corner of our country, has lost some of its essence, and each place feels less like home and more like a drab way-station with the same mix-n-match cast of characters.
Still, at least James Pinkerton thinks it's not too late to
Keep America American
The same bad idea that is ruining Europe threatens to ruin the United States, too. Indeed, the news that Uncle Sam can't find more than 600,000 of what the government calls "fugitive aliens," those who have been ordered out of the country but slipped past the enforcement system, reminds us, yet again, that border enforcement and maintenance of sovereignty are low priorities for Washington.
The bad idea threatening both America and Europe is this: Borders don't matter. Why not? Because patriotism is deemed some sort of infantile disease to be grown out of. Therefore, a conglomerated government is the only way to assure docility and passivity for the masses - oops, make that peace and prosperity.
[...]Hence the European Union, stretching now from Ireland to Bulgaria, includes some 500 million people. That all sounds great - for an empire. Indeed, Brussels, capital of the European Union, has become an imperial city; its palaces, bulging with Eurocrats, issue foggy declarations about the "Idea of Europe." But here's a sharp truth: Europe is not an idea; it's a place, a place for Europeans. These folks have a shared history and a shared religious tradition, Judeo-Christianity - or at least they did until the European Idealists, eager to flatten their own local customs in the name of politico-economic unification, opened the border to millions of Muslim immigrants.
Unfortunately, the globalizing plan hasn't produced harmonious odes to joy. Instead, big cities have been scarily divided into ethnic and religious combat zones.''
Read the rest here; Pinkerton is somewhat optimistic, and optimism is what I need now to keep my determination up.
NASHVILLE, TENN. � The "Friendliest City in America" finds itself in a nasty fight and the national glare because of a language issue tied to illegal immigration.
A recent City Council bill requiring Nashville to conduct business solely in English was quickly trumped by the mayor's veto. But the free-for-all continues, haunting tourism and business officials who fear it will tarnish the city's Southern image.
"We are the friendliest city in America," said Mayor Bill Purcell, who's spending the last of eight years in office. "It is a part of who and what we are. We encourage people to come for the weekend, a week or the rest of their lives. And this law was directly contrary to that."
Councilman Eric Crafton said his bill would force non-English speakers to learn the language faster. He acknowledges that Nashville already conducts business in English but invokes the illegal immigration shadow by saying that the policy could change, because the U.S. government hasn't halted the flow of undocumented workers.
[...]Both sides in the bitter fight agree on just two things: Frustration over illegal immigration from Spanish-speaking countries is behind the support for the bill � and the bill wouldn't have done a thing about that anyway.
Regardless, local bloggers now vent over illegal immigration in vitriolic and emotional Internet posts about the bill. Much of it focuses on preserving a way of life.
With his veto, the mayor of the nation's country music capital was "caving in to those who wish to change our state instead of those who wish to preserve it!" read a post on the Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies Web site.
"We have to take back our community and our country somewhere," a resident of nearby Hermitage told a local newspaper.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce has called the bill "an official policy by Nashville against inclusiveness." But the organization also felt the need to add that it's firmly against illegal immigration.
[...]
The local Roman Catholic bishop, David R. Choby, stood in support with Purcell as he made the veto announcement. "The characteristics of kindness, for which this city has developed a national recognition, can also be called Christian charity," he said.
Aimed at Hispanics
The factor unmentioned in the bill is the Spanish-speaking immigrants, whose growing presence across the South during this decade has triggered cultural change and unease.
Nashville is home to the nation's largest Kurdish community and large numbers of immigrants from Southeast Asia and Africa, but the controversy has ignored them in comparison.
In recent years, Nashville's immigrant population has swelled, drawn by service industry and construction growth and other parts of a healthy economy. As of 2000, about 29,000 residents, or 5 percent of the total, were Hispanic, and a language other than English was spoken in one in 10 Nashville homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
First of all, it distresses me very much that an iconic city like Nashville, which represents country music, that most American of all musical genres, is now on its way to being another polyglot slum. And it dumbfounds me that Nashville has the largest Kurdish colony in the United States. And please: I don't want to hear about how the Kurds are our allies, our friends, our helpers in Iraq. We have heard the same story about the Hmongs and how we 'owe' them for helping us in Southeast Asia. So anybody who helps us is now entitled to the run of our country, and their extended families too? Enough is enough.
Why can't we just declare some city to be an American City, to be preserved as a kind of museum piece, so that future generations will know about that quaint old English-speaking country called the U.S.A.? Or is this country going to be turned into a coast-to-coast Tijuana before we even know what hit us?
Whenever these stories appear in the MSM, there is the now-familiar cast of characters: the pandering city officials squaring off against the citizenry, and taking the side of the illegals, and then the goody-two-shoes liberal clergy, with their pious cant about 'welcoming' the poor immigrants. Where are the city officials who will show some integrity and some loyalty to their country, their people, their rightful constituents? Are they all open-borders whores? Thank goodness there are still a few like Mayor Lou Barletta, the feisty mayor of the besieged town of Hazleton, PA, to provide us an example of what real leaders should be.
But we need to replace a lot of these sorry leaders who are selling us out for the thirty pieces of silver, or for the sake of the 'Hispanic vote' or the Kurdish vote or for the sake of 'business' or whatever.
I really had hopes of spending the last years of my life somewhere in the Southeast; not too many years ago, before 9/11 jarred me out of my slumber, I truly thought that, although Texas was being overrun by illegals, the rest of the Southern states still retained their unique, traditional character; my ideal was to live out my years in some small town, among like-minded folk, especially having spent much time in large urban centers up North. Who could have imagined that even the Southeast, and a quintessential American town like Nashville would be in the crosshairs of the diversity Nazis and the illegal invaders?
Everybody who knows me knows that I was always a lover of travel, always interested in other cultures, languages, and experiences. But when diversity became compulsory, when it became enforced and coerced by soulless bureaucrats -- or by arrogant invaders who unilaterally decided our country belonged to them -- I suddenly lost my taste for that 'diversity'. If that makes me xenophobic, so be it. Nobody has a right to change the population and the culture of an established community into something utterly different. Such an imposition is not in any way compatible with freedom.
'Diversity' (how I've learned to loathe the sound of that word!) must be self-chosen, voluntary. Nobody has a right to force it on another individual or even less, on an entire country. Those of us who liked 'diversity' occasionally could travel to experience it. That's the best way to experience 'diversity', because then you can choose just what variety of it you like, and sample it in an exotic setting. Heck, that was the main motivator to travel, for me: the idea of a change of scene, different people, varied sights, sounds, smells. But when all the diversity is being jumbled together and dumped unceremoniously on our doorstep, it somehow loses its appeal. When the element of choice is denied us, then it becomes an injustice.
Now, what's the point of travel, if we encounter the same disparate, mismatched collection of peoples wherever we go? These days, when I am in an airport, I can hardly tell where I am; whether in Houston or Newark or Seattle, with the same lumpen 'diversity' everywhere. Each city, each corner of our country, has lost some of its essence, and each place feels less like home and more like a drab way-station with the same mix-n-match cast of characters.
Still, at least James Pinkerton thinks it's not too late to
Keep America American
The same bad idea that is ruining Europe threatens to ruin the United States, too. Indeed, the news that Uncle Sam can't find more than 600,000 of what the government calls "fugitive aliens," those who have been ordered out of the country but slipped past the enforcement system, reminds us, yet again, that border enforcement and maintenance of sovereignty are low priorities for Washington.
The bad idea threatening both America and Europe is this: Borders don't matter. Why not? Because patriotism is deemed some sort of infantile disease to be grown out of. Therefore, a conglomerated government is the only way to assure docility and passivity for the masses - oops, make that peace and prosperity.
[...]Hence the European Union, stretching now from Ireland to Bulgaria, includes some 500 million people. That all sounds great - for an empire. Indeed, Brussels, capital of the European Union, has become an imperial city; its palaces, bulging with Eurocrats, issue foggy declarations about the "Idea of Europe." But here's a sharp truth: Europe is not an idea; it's a place, a place for Europeans. These folks have a shared history and a shared religious tradition, Judeo-Christianity - or at least they did until the European Idealists, eager to flatten their own local customs in the name of politico-economic unification, opened the border to millions of Muslim immigrants.
Unfortunately, the globalizing plan hasn't produced harmonious odes to joy. Instead, big cities have been scarily divided into ethnic and religious combat zones.''
Read the rest here; Pinkerton is somewhat optimistic, and optimism is what I need now to keep my determination up.
Labels: American Culture, Illegal Immigration, Multiculturalism