All I can say is, “What the heck?”
I recently saw a post on blog Sheepshead Bites that politicians are seeking to have more Creole and Russian interpreters at polling sites. This has me baffled.
• Don’t you have to be a citizen of this country to vote? So says Wikipedia:
Since 1996, a federal law has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, punishing them by fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and deportation. Exempt from punishment is any non-citizen who “reasonably believed at the time of voting (…) that he or she was a citizen of the United States,” had a parent who is or was a citizen, and began permanently living in the United States before turning 16 years old. The federal law does not prohibit non-citizens from voting in state or local elections, but no state has allowed non-citizens to vote in state elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw non-citizen voting in 1926.
• Don’t you have to pass the citizenship test in order to be a citizen?
• Does that not imply that you need to have a rudimentary knowledge of the official language of this country in order to take the test? One of the requirements is:
You are able to speak, read, and write English (with exceptions for certain long-term residents over a certain age, and persons with certain medical disabilities)
• Why would the citizenship test be given in any language other than English, which is this country’s official language?
• And if one has passed the test, then one must possess such knowledge, so why would one need to have an interpreter?
The fact that any politician would be even remotely interested in having additional interpreters, for any language other than English, is absurd at best.
Before all the politically correct folks out there — of which there are many and who will no doubt jump up and down and carry on like a bunch of wild animals foaming at the mouth — start calling me all sorts of names, know that I don’t care how politically incorrect I am. I firmly believe that you need to speak the official language if you want to be a citizen.
Over the years, I have met many who did embrace citizenship, and each of them had to learn the language in order to take the test.
Not for Nuthin™ but local pols need to start pressing “1” for English only. If you want to vote here, you need to be a citizen here. Therefore, you must be able to speak the official language here — English.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
