THE TELEGRAPH: A small town in rural New York state has passed a law that all town business be conducted in English, leading to accusations that it is stoking racial prejudice.
Jackson, a remote farming community of just over 1,700 people, has been attacked by civil liberties campaigners who say its new ordinance is unconstitutional and illegal.
However, it has already prompted a neighbouring town to pass a similar resolution and another will consider doing the same in June.
The Jackson law designates English as the town's official written and spoken language, insisting that it "be used in all official meetings and business conducted by the elected officials and their appointees".
Roger Meyer, 76, a town councillor and local sawmill owner, said he proposed the law to protect English and redress from the "grassroots" the federal government's historic failure to enshrine it as America's official language. "Everybody assumes that it is but it actually isn't," he said.
While successive waves of immigrants had happily adopted English in the past, "it seems like we're straying away from that now and people want to return to the culture of the country they came from", he said. "When people come to a country to improve their lot, they should assimilate into that country." He acknowledged that Jackson, which is 96 per cent white, hardly had a problem with cultural non-integration but he added: "A construction worker doesn't wear a hard hat because he's never been hit in the head. We just can't sit idly by and wait for something to happen." Despite his insistence that the ordinance was not aimed at Hispanic people, that is how its critics are interpreting it. >>> Tom Leonard in New York | Thursday, May 13, 2010
