Opinion: Tancredo’s body English

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Steve Landesberg used to tell a joke about a hyperpatriotic Southern sheriff who is cruising along in his police car when he hears a song on the radio that celebrates burning the American flag. The sheriff’s reaction: ‘Disgusting—but kinda catchy.’

I had the same reaction to Rep. Tom Tancedro’s comments about immigration at Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate. With the clarity that only extremists can summon, Tancredo offered this singable indictment of the immigration bill that stalled in the Senate later in the week:

‘We’re not just talking about the number of jobs that we may be losing, or the number of kids that are in our schools and impacting our school system, or the number of people that are abusing our hospital system and taking advantage of the welfare system in this country, we’re not just talking about that. We’re talking about something that goes to the very heart of this nation â-- whether or not we will actually survive as a nation.’

Crucial to Tancredo’s doomsaying about national unity is the supposed threat to the dominance of English. Asked later in the debate if his campaign would air advertisements in Spanish, Tancredo replied: ‘No, I would not advertise in Spanish. Believe me when I tell you this, English — the preservation of the English language is important for us for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it is what holds us together. It is the glue that keeps a country together, any country. Bilingual countries don’t work, and we should not encourage it.’

The really catchy line was Tancredo’s explanation of how long a a ‘timeout’ for even legal immigration should last:’It’ll take this long: until we no longer have to press 1 for English and 2 for any other language.’

That comment brought applause in New Hampshire. A couple of days later the Senate amended the ill-fated immigration bill by calling on federal agencies to ‘preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America.’ (Hedging its bets, the Senate also passed a watered-down version recognizing English as the ‘common language.’)

As supporters of immigration reform regroup, they need to find a way to address the cultural anxiety that Tancredo plays upon so effectively. Clearly it’s not enough to point to studies suggesting that the children and grandchildren of Mexican and other immigrants will speak English fluently and will have no need of pressing 2 for Spanish on their cell phones. To drown out the siren song of people like Tancredo, immigration-reform advocates need to sing a different tune, one that make it clear they think assimilation of immigrants is not only inevitable but also desirable.