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Commentary: Canada's Bilingual Experience reviewed by Steve Sailer UPI, June 12, 2001 |
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There's a growing movement in America to restrict some political and government jobs to people who speak both English and Spanish. Canada started down a similar road over 30 years ago by limiting many government positions to those who can speak both English and French. What can Canada's experience tell us about who will be the winners and who will be the losers from this trend? Former President Clinton said last June, "I hope very much that I'm the last president in American history who can't speak Spanish." On Cinco de Mayo (May 5), President George W. Bush became the first president to deliver his weekly radio address in Spanish. Political analysts praised this as a shrewd move to appeal to America's rapidly growing Hispanic population, which now outnumbers African Americans. The same trend toward favoring the bilingual is evident at less glamorous levels of government. In California on April 24, the Oakland City Council voted to require the city to fill openings in certain jobs, such as librarians and building inspectors, with workers who speak not just English but also Spanish or Chinese. It's not clear, however, if even Bush could qualify for a sewer inspector's job in Oakland. Whether the president is actually a Spanish-speaker depends upon how stringently you define the term. Perhaps it would be fairest to say that the president is extremely bilingual, because when giving interviews in his unique brand of "Spanglish," he often shifts back and forth between Spanish and English several times in the same sentence. Still, though in a free-ranging conversation he may not be much of a Spanish-speaker, the president can certainly play one on the radio. When a society discriminates in favor of bilingual government officials, some people (the bilingual) are more equal than other people (the "unilingual.") Of course, even among the bilingual, the government doesn't treat everyone equally. In Oakland, 46 languages are spoken, but only Spanish and Chinese speakers are preferred for Civil Service jobs. And even among the Chinese, Cantonese speakers are legally privileged over Mandarin speakers. The Canadian experience shows that in America, preferences for the bilingual would disproportionately favor the hiring of Hispanic immigrants and their children. Canada became officially bilingual in 1969 in an attempt to cajole French-speaking Quebec into not seceding. In reality, though, the minority's language is legally privileged over the majority's tongue. In "Lament for a Nation," author Scott Reid wrote, "In practice, although not in public pronouncements, the Canadian government actively promotes enforced bilingualism in nine provinces, and tolerates enforced French-only unilingualism in Quebec." Even outside Quebec, French speakers benefit from civil service bilingualism, while speakers of the majority language lose government job opportunities. That's because -- despite the national government's pro-French bias -- French Canadians are much more likely to be bilingual. A full 38 percent of Quebec residents are able to converse in both languages, compared with only 10 percent of the rest of Canada. Outside of Quebec, 85 percent of Francophones are bilingual in contrast to just 6 percent of Anglophones. Thus, overall, French Canadians are about 2.25 times more likely to hold civil service jobs in Ottawa, Canada's capital. The 84 percent of the Canadian population that is unilingual appears to be effectively locked out of much hope of ever becoming prime minister. In contrast, two of the longest-serving recent national leaders, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, came from the tiny sector of the population that is not only bilingual, but is also accent-free in both languages. In Canada, a massive national program that sends Anglophone children to "French immersion" schools where they speak nothing but French was initially highly popular with upper-middle class Anglo parents. In recent years, it has fallen in popularity because it seems to cause learning disabilities in some children, especially boys. Also, even after 12 years of French immersion, few Anglo children speak French well enough to satisfy French-Canadians. If the American bilingual movement sets high standards for ability to speak Spanish as a requirement for government jobs, then few besides native Spanish speakers will be hired. In contrast, if marginally bilingual people like Bush qualify, then wealthy whites, such as the Bush family, will be favored over working class whites and blacks. In Canada, according to Reid, governmental bilingualism has divided the country into "two unilingual proletariats and a bilingual elite." The children of the multinational business elite, for example, have more opportunity and motivation to learn Spanish than the average American. Former President Bush, for instance, began an oil-drilling joint venture in Mexico over four decades ago. The Bush children thus had a strong incentive to learn Spanish in order to help them cash in on their family's many connections with Mexico's power elite. Similarly, the rich can afford to give their heirs private tutoring in Spanish. They can even send their scions abroad for immersion in the daily life of a Hispanic country. For example, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush met his Mexican-born wife, Columba, in Leon, Mexico, where the teenage Jeb was living as part of an exchange program offered by his famous prep school, Phillips Academy. Jeb's expensive knowledge of Spanish helped make him governor of Florida by allowing him to woo Cuban-Americans in their native tongue. Likewise, the wealthy, especially in the Southwest, have another motivation to learn Spanish that the average Americans lacks. The rich find it useful to be able to issue orders to their Latino servants in Spanish. Further, affluent children have a greater chance to pick up Spanish from their Hispanic nannies, maids and gardeners. For instance, commentator William F. Buckley Jr.'s father was a rich Texas oilman with major interests in the Mexican oil fields. Several of his children learned Spanish from their nannies before they could speak English. (When Buckley Sr. discovered this, he packed his children off to British boarding schools so they could learn the Queen's English, which is why Buckley Jr. has that "mid-Atlantic" accent.) Besides helping the rich, favoring bilingual speakers for government positions also causes gender discrimination. On average, women benefit and men lose, because females tend to be better at learning foreign tongues. Bilingual favoritism also discriminates against blacks. On average, blacks would obtain fewer government jobs because, due to attending less adequate schools and having less wealth, they are not as likely to learn Spanish. Finally, bilingualism in government work imposes what economists call "opportunity costs." To learn a politically preferred language, ambitious people invest time that they could have spent learning something else. For example, in 1975 journalist Peter Brimelow of Toronto's Financial Post tried to interview an up-and-coming young politician named Joe Clark about the great issue of the day: Should Canada have free trade with America? Clark immediately admitted he didn't actually know anything about economics. "You see," he said, "When I went into politics I had to choose between learning economics and learning French. And I chose French ..." Not long after, Clark became prime minister of Canada, a country where being able to speak two languages is often more valuable to one's career than having anything worth saying in either tongue.
Steve Sailer (www.iSteve.com) is a columnist for VDARE.com and the film critic for The American Conservative.
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