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Bilinguialism Sleight of Hand

In a recent speech, Senator Barack Obama opined in answer to a question about English-only laws:

Transcript of key point:

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.

Some on the right are calling this an outrage, but the guys at OTB are more sanguine:

Alex Knapp: This, to me, seems pretty uncontroversial. I personally consider it a woeful deficiency in my education that I speak only the barest smattering of French and Spanish–certainly not enough to carry on a conversation–and am completely ignorant of any Chinese or Japanese. Indeed, I recall a time not too long ago when conversatives lamented the fact that multilinguism, once a foundation of what was considered a well-rounded education, had fallen to the wayside. ...

UPDATE (James Joyner):  While I agree with Alex about the silliness of this as an “outrage” and even agree that bilingualism has its uses, Obama has stumbled on one of my pet peeves with this one:

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

Europeans speak English because they live in geographically small countries and have regular occasion to speak other languages. English has become the default lingua franca because of the reach of the British Empire followed by the rise of the United States as a world power. If you live virtually anywhere in the world where English is not your first language, then your choice of a second language is rather obvious.

In contrast, I think Jonah Goldberg got this one right:

Obama has a great gift at sounding insightful when he insipidly changes the subject to something completely different and more helpful to his cause. But, if Obama honestly thinks the argument against bilingualism has anything to do with the importance of teaching kids a second language, he really has no idea whatsoever what the argument is about. More likely, this is his way of sounding like a brave-truth-teller by offering a “criticism” pretty much every middle class parent already agrees with and deflecting an issue that might put him crosswise with Democratic Hispanic activists and other multiculturalists.

For the record, I agree that students should learn a second language whenever possible. But, as Jim asks, “Has anyone demanded foreign language classes be ‘English-Only?” The stupidity or dishonesty of Obama’s rhetorical switch-a-roo would be manifestly obvious if he’d said:

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child is a lot better at math. You should be thinking about, how can your child become really good at math? We should have every child doing advanced math.

Still, Obama’s verbal sleight of hand shouldn’t surprise us at this point. After all he was able to put a black religious demagogue into his magic hat and with showy rhetorical prestidigitation pull back his own racist grandmother. You’d just think more folks would see the wires at this point.

I think that’s mostly right, but I have one quibble. English-only laws really aren’t about encouraging assimilation by immigrants or even about ensuring that immigrant children learn English in school. They are about discouraging immigration by raising the barriers to entry by making it more costly for non-English speaking immigrants to work and live in the US. Immigration policy is the real question. The debate about language is pure surplusage.