{"id":3794,"date":"2008-10-30T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=3794"},"modified":"2010-11-24T02:27:53","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:27:53","slug":"advocating-for-englishand-against-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/10\/30\/advocating-for-englishand-against-puerto-rico\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocating for English\u2026and Against Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"

English First<\/a> is an organization advocating the adoption of English-only laws in the U.S., which would mean government agencies and officials would not be allowed to conduct any type of business in a language other than English. They also oppose bilingual education and bilingual ballots. Here is a screenshot of their homepage’s banner; perhaps you will note a small irony, coming from an organization concerned about people being unable to use the English language:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a very clear anti-immigrant stance, which in some cases bleeds over into a general anti-Latino perspective. For instance, the website has a link to a letter<\/a> sent to Attorney General Mukasey, expressing concern over Department of Justice statements about plans to crack down on voter intimidation:<\/p>\n

Yet under the new DOJ policies as we understand them, anyone who dares complain when they see a busload of illegal aliens pulling up to a polling place could be arrested on the spot by agents of their own government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s interesting here is the idea that you could immediately spot “a busload of illegal aliens.” I could be wrong here, but I’m guessing that to at least some members of the organization, any vehicle with Latinos (or other brown-skinned people) in it might be targeted as full of “illegal aliens.”<\/p>\n

The organization also blames Hispanic legislators<\/a> for the failure of the original financial bailout bill.<\/p>\n

One of English First’s projects is No Statehood for Puerto Rico<\/a>. Technically speaking, the population of Puerto Rico has the right to become a state, should a majority ever vote to do so. All Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and can travel freely between the island and the mainland, with no need for a passport or visa. Here are some images from the homepage:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think the hand at the bottom of that last image is supposed to be begging for a handout.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All of these images portray Puerto Rico as a money-sucking burden on the rest of the U.S. The website questions Puerto Ricans’ patriotism<\/a> (because they protest military training at Vieques, unlike the good people of Oklahoma, who do not protest military training at Ft. Sill), links Puerto Rico to terrorism<\/a>, and argues that Puerto Rico is a “proud, Spanish-speaking nation<\/a>” and thus wouldn’t want to be a state anyway (leading to questions of why any of this is an issue, since the population would presumably never vote for statehood anyway). I am unclear whether English First advocates total Puerto Rican independence from the U.S., or just keeping it from becoming a state.<\/p>\n

English First has a handy list of states<\/a> that have English-Only laws, as well as which ones have been overturned.<\/p>\n

You might also check out Lisa’s recent post <\/a>on an organization that linked anti-immigration and pro-environment stances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English First is an organization advocating the adoption of English-only laws in the U.S., which would mean government agencies and officials would not be allowed to conduct any type of business in a language other than English. They also oppose bilingual education and bilingual ballots. Here is a screenshot of their homepage’s banner; perhaps you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,2125,1796,276,283,285,1754],"class_list":["post-3794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-nation-puerto-rico-territory-of-u-s","tag-nationalismpatriotism","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-latinos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3794"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29831,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions\/29831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}