How to Tame a Wild Tongue: Language Rights in the United States

I would like you to know that we did not all come from Mexico. That hurts our feelings when you call us wetbacks. We do not all steal from you. We do not all stare at the television for hours. We are not all lazy. We are not all immigrants. We are not all in gangs that jump people for their money nor do we do drugs. We do not all drop out of school when it gets difficult. We are not dirty because of our skin color. We are not all poor. Most of us know English so don t talk about us like we don t understand. Our parents mostly come here for a better life and mostly it turns out to be the other way around. Some of our families are not always perfect. I know mine aren't. But we all have families and friends that love us. These are the facts. --Diana Reyes, 7th Grade Border Crossings It seems like a heresy to hold a conference on borders and border crossing at a time when the public discourse centers on how to secure these borders, with $20 million spent over the last 10 years in the US on fences, chains, patrol guards and with new legislation providing another 139 million (1) to further upgrade technology and strengthen border enforcement. While we struggle to transcend cultural, ethnic, racial, and linguistic borders, those physical and material borders are growing stronger and increasingly difficult to cross. A conference on human rights and borderlands could not be more timely given the current debate on immigration legislation in the US Senate. The President of the United States claims that "Securing the Border is essential to securing the Homeland." "The US Mexican border es una herida abierta" counters Gloria Anzalda. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them," she insists. (2) A White House press release takes pride to the fact that since the current president took office "he has increased funding for border security by 60 percent. Border agents have apprehended and sent home more than 4.5 million people coming into the country illegally including about 350,000 with criminal records." (3) The obsession with illegal immigration becomes all the more interesting considering that the social state is, according to Henry Giroux, gradually turned into a "garrison state." (4) It is a state that increasingly protects the interests of global, transnational corporations, "while stepping up the level of repression and militarization on the domestic front.'" Social problems are increasingly criminalized. For instance, according to the proposed immigration legislation, people who enter the country illegally will be treated as felons to be deported. "Repression increases and replaces compassion." Modernization, "economic progress" and globalization, are major production machines of immigration (illegal or not). These people, illegal immigrants in particular, are now perceived as just bodies, disposable labor entities, they become, according to Zygmunt Bauman "human waste." Bauman powerfully argues that "there are always too many of them. 'Them' are the fellows of whom there should be fewer--or better still none at all. And there are never enough of us. 'Us' are the folks of whom there should be more." (5) An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the US right now. They have crossed physical and metaphorical borders but for most of them it will be very difficult to cross these borders back again. Borders as state institutions work for those who have passports. Not for the illegal, or for the ones without papers. What does it mean to get a passport then? What does it take to get a passport? Many will argue that in return for a "passport" you need first to learn English. You can't bring your native tongue to the other side. You will only get a temporary pass until you prove that you are or have the potential to become a truly good American. "In return for freedom and opportunity, [immigrants] need to learn English" (6) claims Gerda Bikales once English-Only group's executive director. …