English-Only Proposal More Detrimental Than It Appears

by Mike Hall, May 19, 2006

After voting Wednesday to fence off a large part of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Senate’s immigration debate grew even more contentious yesterday. The Senate approved an amendment to make English the “national language” and defeated an amendment that would have blocked Social Security benefits for undocumented workers who earn permanent residency status.

Opponents of the English language amendment fear that it could override several executive orders by former President Bill Clinton that require multilingual services and communications by many federal agencies and also may impact similar state and local requirements. The amendment’s sponsor, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) did make a change to spare current state and local laws that require multilingual ballots and bilingual education.

The Social Security amendment from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) would have prevented undocumented workers who earn residency under the program from collecting Social Security for the time they worked before they earned new legal status, even though they paid into Social Security for that time.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) says:

Their money sits in the Social Security Administration waiting to be matched with an eligible beneficiary, and once those workers establish the eligibility, how in all fairness can we deny them the credit for their past contributions?

The Senate defeated another amendment that would have denied citizenship to immigrants who come to the county on a temporary work visa.

The Senate hopes to finish debate on the immigration bill next week. If passed, the Senate bill will have to be reconciled with the House version of immigration reform, which includes heavy immigration enforcement but offers no path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the United States for years.  

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