'OFFICIAL LANGUAGE' BILLS SPARK DEBATE AT GWU
Washington Post
UNITY WEIGHED AGAINST ETHNIC IDENTITIES
Author: Karlyn Barker; Washington Post Staff Writer
Supporters and opponents of proposed legislation that would make English the official language of the United States clashed yesterday over whether a common language would unite or divide the nation's many ethnic and immigrant groups
"The main goal is national unity," said Tom Olson, representing U.S. English, an organization that supports making English the official language and the language used in disseminating all nonessential government information. "We are a nation of immigrants, and it has been the English language that has allowed us to communicate."
But Martha I. Jimenez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued that language is a vital part of a person's national origin and that proposed "English only" laws would discriminate against the foreign-born and other U.S. residents.
Immigrants and other non-English-speaking U.S. residents should be encouraged and helped to learn English, but not forced to use it, she said.
The debate on the role of a common language in a nation's identity took place at a two-day Conference on Cross Cultural Transitions, which ended yesterday. The conference, at George Washington University, was sponsored by the International Counseling Center and the GWU Division of Continuing Education.
Several proposals pending in Congress would make English the official national language.
Olson said the legislation is not an attempt to punish immigrants but to bring them into the mainstream of American society. The law, he said, "would add to the incentive for new immigrants to learn the official language, which is English."
Jiminez warned, however, that approval of any of the bills would jeopardize other constitutional protections for non-English-speaking persons, including native Americans as well as the foreign born. Such laws, she said, could undermine government health, safety and bilingual education programs throughout the country.
At a panel discussion held Tuesday, WRC-TV reporter Marjorie Margolies and others shared their experiences with cross-cultural adoptions and the problems foreign-born children have adapting to life in the United States while maintaining their ethnic identity.
"These kids want to be as much like the other kids as possible," said Margolies, recalling that her own adopted children initially were bothered when they began to notice that they were "obviously not" her biological children.
Jonathan Alperin, 30, an Amerasian from Korea who was adopted by Jewish parents, said his adoptive family encouraged him to find out about his own culture and were almost overly sensitive to his needs.
But Carolyn Jones, 22, born in Costa Rica and adopted as a young girl with her brother and sister, said she left her first adoptive parents after they refused to let her speak Spanish to her brother and sister.
Sally Clemons of the ACORN adoption and counseling service network cautioned that many adoptive parents are so driven by their desire to adopt a baby that "the need for the racial and cultural identity for the child just doesn't sink in."Oftentimes, she said, the adoptive parents' need for the adopted child "to be like them" later magnifies the normal differences that occur between parents and their teen-agers
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Panel members said that parents who adopt more than one minority child into their family tend to have fewer problems and that foreign-born adopted children suffer less depression if they live with ethnic adults. Also, they said, single parents and parents with large families, often turned down by traditional adoption agencies, usually do very well when they adopt