Barack Obama made in my opinion a big gaffe at a town hall meeting where he said, “I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, we need to have English only." Obama then went on to say, "“Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English, I agree with this. 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.” And then, “You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual,” he said. “We should have every child speaking more than one language. 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 beacoup, right?”

This naturally set off a storm among conservatives who are concerned about the dilution of American culture and unity through liberal policies. Obama's statements are very telling about what he stands for in terms of the ill-legal immigration debate. In his first statement he says that he doesn't understand what the problem is. This is a typical stance taken by extreme liberals and their salad bowl theory of multi-culturalism. 

Many experts agree that a common language is an important glue that ties a society together and in America, it represents the whole idea of the melting pot where individuals from different countries and cultures have come together to create the unique American experience. But the intelligent Mr. Obama has chosen to ignore the fact that a common language leads to a common culture and expresses puzzlement as to what the big deal is. When you go into isolated immigrant communities where most people do not speak English then maybe you will start to understand that maybe just maybe, this is not a good idea. Mr. Obama is certain that the immigrants will learn English but this has not been the case. Usually you will have some immigrants who have bothered to learn English and they act as interpreters for their friends that do not.  Unfortunately many, many immigrants are not learning English, especially the ones that are here illegally.  They don't have to learn English because our stupid liberal policies are allowing them to get by without it.

His next statements are interesting in that they would make more sense and be less controversial if they were presented in a different way. In Obama's presentation, he ties the idea of teaching our kids other languages with immigration and Spanish. Of course that ties his statements in with the Mexican community and the problem of illegal immigration.  A topic that is sure to spur passions. Now if you would take the idea of teaching our kids other languages without mentioning immigration or Spanish, you have a totally different message. Because of the expanding global economy it is a very good idea to emphasize the benefits of being multilingual. Thirty years ago there was no reason for the average American to learn another language. Now it can be an important skill when going to compete in the job market of the future. If Mr. Obama was concerned with the lack of language skills in America, he could have presented his idea in terms of job skills.

But Mr. Obama tied his statements to Spanish and immigrants. Which can mean only one thing. His statements were geared to pandering to the Mexican community. So when you look at it in this context I think you see an idea of where Obama stands on immigration.

1. He is a typical leftist liberal in his embrace of multi-culturalism. Which means he will be more concerned with pandering to ethnic groups rather than social integration and unity.

2. He is sitting on the fence about immigrants learning English. In typical political double speak, he states that he is for immigrants learning English but it is no big deal, they will learn it eventually. Which means he wants to appease the people who feel strongly about maintaining a common language and not offending large immigrant groups at the same time. In other words, he really isn't going to do anything about this topic.

I think that this incident goes to show you that Mr. Obama is not the unifying force that the media makes him out to be. He appears to be a typical left-wing politician.

 - Thomas Paine 2

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