Canadians can soon get their passport in 30 business days — or it’s free

2025/03/10 Leave a comment

Good to have this kind of service guarantee although more of a reflection of current service levels than a stretch commitment:

The federal government announced on Friday that it’s going to be speeding up the processing for passports so Canadians can get their documents within 30 business days — or they’ll be free.

Under the change, any complete passport application will be processed within 30 business days or it will be free, with the passport fees to be refunded. The 30-day period does not include the mailing time of the application or the passport itself.

The 30-day limit applies whether Canadians submit their application online, in person or by mail.

Citizens’ Services Minister Terry Beech did not say when the process would begin, however, only noting it would happen later this year.

The shift by the government comes just three months after thousands of Canadians saw passport delays amid the Canada Post strike, which followed months of issues due to post-COVID-19 delays.

Beech also noted in a press release that the federal government continues to roll out its online passport renewal program, which began in December 2024, with eligible Canadians able to complete their application, pay fees and upload a professional digital photo from their computer or mobile device.

The government says the phased roll-out is being used to monitor, adapt and refine the process to ensure it is working before it’s rolled out to more Canadians in the coming months.

Source: Canadians can soon get their passport in 30 business days — or it’s free

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All Senate vacancies now filled as Trudeau makes 5 new appointments

2025/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note. My analysis of the diversity of appointments below across three prime ministers:

With just days to go until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves federal politics, his office says five new appointments have now filled all the vacancies in the 105-seat Senate.

The Prime Minister’s Office says in a news release that the Governor General has appointed former Moncton mayor Dawn Arnold for New Brunswick and former MLA Tony Ince for Nova Scotia.

Non-profit executive Katherine Hay, charity CEO Farah Mohamed and former provincial politician Sandra Pupatello have been appointed for Ontario.

There were 22 vacancies in the Senate when Trudeau became prime minister in 2015 and launched what his government called a “new, non-partisan, merit-based process” to advise on appointments.

There have been 100 independent appointments to the Senate made on the advice of Trudeau, with a dozen in 2024 and 10 this year.

Source: All Senate vacancies now filled as Trudeau makes 5 new appointments

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Government Monitoring of Immigrants’ Social Media

2025/03/08 Leave a comment

While hard to trust the Trump administration on much, a case can be made to check social media to flag potential security threats:

As part of an effort to enhance screening measures, the White House has announced it will require millions of immigrants seeking benefits ranging from green cards to citizenship to provide social media information on their immigration applications. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a notice in the Federal Register on March 5, 2025, detailing plans to collect social media identifiers (“handles”) on nine immigration forms to comply with Executive Order 14161, “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” signed by President Trump on January 20, 2025.

According to the notice, USCIS will collect social media handles (but not passwords) to verify applicants’ identities and to assess whether granting immigration benefits might pose security or public safety risks.

The new requirement will apply to nine forms, including:

  • N-400 (Application for Naturalization) 
  • I-131 (Application for Travel Document) 
  • I-192 (Application for Advance Permission to Enter as Nonimmigrant) 
  • I-485 (Application for Adjustment of Status) 
  • I-589 (Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal) 
  • I-590 (Registration for Classification as Refugee) 
  • I-730 (Refugee/Asylee Relative Petition) 
  • I-751 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence) 
  • I-829 (Petition by Investor to Remove Conditions on Permanent Resident Status)

USCIS estimates this proposal would affect over 3.5 million applicants annually. The public has 60 days to submit comments on the proposal via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (Docket ID USCIS-2025-0003). After the comment period, DHS will review feedback before deciding whether to implement the rule as proposed, modify it, or withdraw it.

USCIS Social Media Monitoring: A Decade of Expanding Surveillance

For years, officers of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have been checking social media accounts to look for immigration fraud across various application types, from family-based petitions to employment visas and naturalization applications.

The formal history of USCIS social media monitoring shows a clear evolution:

  • 2016: USCIS established a dedicated Social Media Division within its Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS), marking the beginning of institutionalized social media vetting.
  • 2017: The Trump administration implemented “extreme vetting” procedures in March, intensifying the scrutiny of visa applications, including more thorough examination of applicants’ social media. In September, DHS issued a Federal Register notice indicating it would collect and keep information from social media on all individuals passing through the U.S. immigration system.
  • 2019: The Department of State began requiring all visa applicants to disclose their social media handles as part of forms DS-160 (Nonimmigrant Visa Application) and DS-260 (Immigrant Visa Electronic Application).
  • 2021: The scope of monitored platforms expanded to include not only major U.S.-based social media platforms but also international platforms from China and Russia.
  • 2025: With the latest Executive Order 14161 signed by President Trump on January 20, 2025, USCIS is now formalizing and expanding social media data collection to nine different immigration forms.

Law enforcement, however, has always been free to use social media as part of investigations of both threats and crimes.

Social Media Monitoring and Immigration Applications

USCIS officers and consular officials often use social media to confirm the legitimacy of relationships and claims made in applications. This can include checking the consistency between online activity and information provided in forms and searching for any content that might contradict statements made during the application process….

Source: Government Monitoring of Immigrants’ Social Media

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Coyne – Tariffs are only the start: we must buckle down for years of conflict with the U.S. [population]

2025/03/08 7 Comments

Coyne somewhat surprisingly ends up endorsing the Century 2100 population goal, with little critical thinking regarding its limitations and fallacies (a larger population does not mean a more prosperous population):

…Last, and perhaps most important: if we’re tired of the Americans kicking sand in our faces, maybe it’s time we bulked up. We’re roughly 42 million to their 340 million today. But suppose we aimed to make that eight-to-one margin more like four-to-one by the end of the century. Suppose, that is, we took seriously the idea of aiming for a population of 100 million.

To get there in 75 years would require no acceleration in population growth: in fact, it would mean slowing our growth considerably, to roughly 1.2 per cent per annum, from the 1.5 per cent annually it has averaged over the last 75 years.

It isn’t only our relationship with the United States this would change. Most other large developed countries are projected to flatline or shrink over the same interval. By 2100, according to the United Nations, the population of Japan will fall from 123 million today to 74 million; Germany, from 85 million to 71 million; Italy, from 59 million to 35 million. France and the United Kingdom are projected to grow slightly, to 68 million and 74 million, respectively.

Were we merely to double our current population by then (a growth rate of less than 1 per cent annually), therefore, we would be the second largest developed country, a major player on the world stage – and better placed to hold our own against the Great Republic to our south.

Source: Tariffs are only the start: we must buckle down for years of conflict with the U.S.

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Canada asking if its immigration officials will be hit by new Trump visa ban 

2025/03/08 Leave a comment

Absurb that it is necessary to check (but is prudent to do so):

Ottawa is seeking answers from the Trump administration about whether a visa ban for foreign government officials it blames for helping migrants illegally enter the United States would apply to Canadian public servants.

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday introduced a policy restricting visas to the United States for foreign officials – including immigration, customs, airport and port authority officials – who it believes are “knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.”

A press statement from Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, says this would include foreign officials the administration believes have failed to enforce immigration laws.

The State Department did not immediately respond to questions about whether the policy applied to Canadians public servants.

Mr. Rubio’s statement said the new visa restrictions will target “foreign officials and others facilitating illegal migration into the United States.” It will include officials implementing policies and practices that “knowingly facilitate the transit of aliens intending to illegally migrate into the United States via the U.S. southwest border.”

The announcement did not mention the U.S.’s shared northern border with Canada or say whether the policy applies to illegal crossings from here.

On Thursday, the federal government said it is seeking to clarify from its counterparts in Washington on whether Canadian federal employees could be banned from entering the U.S. under the policy…

Source: Canada asking if its immigration officials will be hit by new Trump visa ban

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Canadian snowbirds caught up in new registration requirements

2025/03/08 Leave a comment

Another example of the risk of doing things quickly without considering the impact (hallmark of the Trump administration):

An estimated one million Canadian “snowbirds” – seniors and retirees who winter in southern states such as Florida and Arizona – inject billions in tourism spending during their months-long stays in the United States. But under an executive order from President Donald Trump, these visitors will soon have to register to travel south of the border, as part of an effort to curb illegal immigration.

Mr. Trump’s order, called Protecting the American People Against Invasion, is believed to be the first time in history that the United States has included Canadians in a crackdown on undocumented migrants. Immigration lawyers in the U.S. said the order targets the wrong people and will further hurt the disintegrating Canada-U.S. relationship.

“Our immigration house is on fire, and we’re worried about the curtains,” said Rosanna Berardi, an immigration lawyer in Buffalo. “This is just stupid. This is picking on people that are coming as snowbirds. They own property here. They pay taxes. They are higher-level income earners. They spend a lot of money in the U.S. They are not part of the immigration problem.”

The order, issued by Mr. Trump the evening he took office, has received little attention amid the chaotic first weeks of a presidency dominated by tariff threats and orders that have isolated the U.S. from its allies. It requires all “aliens” 14 years or older staying for more than 30 days in the U.S. to be registered and potentially fingerprinted, unless otherwise exempted….

Source: Canadian snowbirds caught up in new registration requirements

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Snyder: Antisemitism in the Oval Office

2025/03/08 Leave a comment

Interesting and credible take:

..And so I can’t escape that first reflexive response to that scene in the Oval Office: here is a person of Jewish origin being treated in a very particular and familiar way by non-Jews. I get the dissidents’ comparison to an interrogation or trial, and can imagine the cell or the courtroom. But what struck me was the circle of bullying gentiles — as in Europe in the 1930s, and in other places and times, at the particular moment when the mob felt that power was shifting.

But is it? In writing about antisemitism here I am obviously making a moral point. I am asking us, Americans, to think seriously about what we are doing, about Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine, in which we are now becoming complicit. That Russia’s war is antisemitic is one of its many evils; taking Russia’s side in that war is wrong for many reasons, including that one. At a time when antisemitism is a growing problem around the world, I would like for us to be able to see the obvious examples, especially when we Americans are so closely involved in them. There is a certain mobbish mindlessness in the growing circle of American voices calling for Zelens’kyi to leave office, and I think it has a name and a history. I would like for us to recall that history and remember that the name can apply to us.

In writing about antisemitism I am also making a political claim. The antisemite really believes that the Jew must defer, that the Jew cannot fight, that a state led by a Jew must duly crumble. This was one of Putin’s mistakes, two years ago. And now, I suspect, it is also Trump’s, and Musk’s. America does have the power, of course, to hurt Ukraine. Just as Russia does. The combination of American and Russian policy is killing Ukrainians right now. The costs of the emerging Russian-American axis will be terrible for Ukraine. But Ukraine will not immediately collapse, nor will the Ukrainian population turn against Zelens’kyi. What he will personally do I couldn’t say and won’t try to predict: and that, of course, is my point.

In the world of the antisemite, all is known in advance: the Jew is just a deceiver, concerned only with money, subject to exclusion, intimidated by force. As soon as he is humiliated and eliminated, everything else will fall into its proper place. Consider the smirks in the Oval Office last Friday: the antisemite thinks that he has understood everything. But in the actual world in which we actually live, Jews are humans, perilous and beautiful like the rest of us. The United States has never elected a Jewish president, and perhaps never will. But Ukraine has; and that president represents his people, facing challenges that those who mock him will never understand. Those Americans have chosen to add their own to the evil he must confront. But that does not mean that they will control what happens next…

Source: Antisemitism in the Oval Office

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Donald Trump’s Team Takes First Steps To Cut Legal Immigration

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

Helpful analysis:

Donald Trump reduced legal immigration in his first term, and his team has taken the first steps to do so again. As president, Trump enacted policies that blocked hundreds of thousands of people from immigrating to the United States. Courts stopped some of the most restrictive proposals, but those measures could reemerge in 2025. Economists warn that America faces declining labor force growth without increasing legal immigration. Higher economic growth and living standards will become more challenging if the United States welcomes fewer legal immigrants.

Legal Immigration Declined During Trump’s First Term

Using the president’s authority and restrictive administrative measures, Trump officials reduced the number of legal immigrants admitted to the United States during his first term. According to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis, “If the FY 2016 level had continued during the four years of the Trump administration, approximately 770,000 more individuals would have immigrated legally to the United States.”

The analysis points out the numbers understate the decline because legal immigration rose for three straight years before Donald Trump became president. “The annual level of legal immigration declined by 13% (or 151,740) between FY 2016 and FY 2019 and 40% (or 476,143) between FY 2016 and FY 2020. That decline continued in FY 2021, almost four months of which took place during the Trump administration.”

While Covid-19 reduced admissions in the second half of FY 2020 (the fiscal year ended on September 30, 2020), the Trump administration furthered the reduction by stopping almost all immigrants from entering the United States. In April 2020, Donald Trump issued a proclamation that blocked the entry of all categories of immigrants, including employment-based, except the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, certain medical personnel and individuals whose entry would be in the “national interest.”

A few months later, Trump issued another proclamation that blocked the entry of H-1B, H-2B, L-1 and most J-1 temporary visa holders through December 31, 2020. In an NFAP study, University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump administration policies reduced H-1B and J-1 visas but did not help U.S. workers. “The drop in H-2B program admissions did not boost labor market opportunities for U.S. workers but rather, if anything, worsened them.”

Early Actions To Reduce Legal Immigration

On January 25, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping all refugee admissions into the United States. In FY 2021, the Biden administration surpassed 100,000 refugee admissions. The executive order structured the process such that Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and the president’s homeland security advisor, receives a report from cabinet officials. Refugee admissions could resume in several months, or it is possible that no refugees will come to America during Donald Trump’s second term.

Nearly 300,000 more refugees would have entered the United States in Trump’s first term if Miller had not fought to suspend refugee admissions and then lower them to historically low levels. The 18,000-ceiling for FY 2020 was 84% lower than the 110,000 limit set in the last year of the Obama administration. The lower refugee admissions did not appear right away in immigration statistics since refugees file for permanent residence a year after entry, and many arrived before Trump took office.

In February 2025, the State Department announced a new policy that will increase visa wait times at U.S. consulates by narrowing the grounds for waiving interviews. Applicants are eligible to waive visa interviews if they “previously held a visa in the same category that expired less than 12 months prior to the new application . . . and apply in their country of nationality or residence, have never been refused a visa (unless such refusal was overcome or waived) and have no apparent or potential ineligibility.”

According to Dagmar Butte of Parker Butte, “The effect is to delay the ability of people to return to the U.S. who have approved petitions if they are changing visa categories. The wait times for interviews at many consulates are quite long.”

A January 20, 2025, executive order set the stage for a new version of the “Muslim ban.” The order states that within 60 days, various officials will submit a report to identify countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.” More broadly, the executive order calls for officials to “Evaluate all visa programs to ensure that they are not used by foreign nation-states or other hostile actors to harm the security, economic, political, cultural, or other national interests of the United States.”

“We are starting to see signs of the impact of the president’s ‘extreme vetting’ policy,” said Dan Berger of Green & Spiegel. “Officers are increasingly comparing what the individual says and has on electronic devices to other agency records and what’s on the internet. That is fair, but recently we have seen minor inconsistencies lead to denied entry.” He said it has become more difficult to tell temporary visa holders whether it is safe to travel.

A Federal Register notice announced that because of the executive order “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” USCIS must implement “rigorous vetting and screening of all grounds of inadmissibility or bases for the denial of immigration- related benefits.” As a result, “Execution of the E.O. requires USCIS to collect Social Media Identifier(s) on immigration forms and/or information collection systems.”

The Trump administration also plans to end parole for several hundred thousand individuals sponsored for humanitarian parole and terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, Venezuelans and others.

Using “Public Charge” To Reduce Legal Immigration

During Donald Trump’s first term, the administration published a “public charge” rule that could have lowered legal immigration levels by raising income and resource requirements for immigrants well beyond current law. Although the rule was not in effect for long due to legal action and injunctions, when the State Department followed its parameters, it contributed to reduced immigration. Admissions in the Immediate Relatives category fell by 7% between FY 2017 and FY 2018, and temporary visas for a K-1 Fiancé(e) of U.S. Citizen declined by 10,122 or 29%.

The public charge rule was an “obsession” for Stephen Miller, according to New York Times journalists Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear. Immigrants are generally ineligible for means-tested federal benefits programs unless they have worked in the United States for five years or longer in a lawful status. (State program eligibility may vary.)

The Biden administration eliminated the Trump rule and followed that by publishing its own public charge rule. The new Trump administration would need to start from the beginning on “public charge.” Trump officials must contend with the Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference to federal agencies, which could help lawsuits against new measures that go beyond U.S. immigration law or regulatory authority. The Trump administration’s public charge rule read like a bill in Congress, such as by establishing income requirements that do not appear in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In October 2019, Donald Trump issued an executive order barring immigrants from the United States without proof of health insurance or the means to buy it. The order was a pretext to block immigrants rather than an attempt to reform public health policy. Although not in effect long due to legal action, a return of the order could decimate legal admissions. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that up to 400,000 immigrants a year could be denied entry under such a mandate. It could return during a second Trump administration.

Due to the lengthy family preference backlogs, administrative measures to restrict legal immigration are most likely to reduce admissions each year in categories without numerical limits, especially the “Immediate Relatives” of U.S. citizens (i.e., spouses, parents and children under 21). Approximately 200,000 fewer Immediate Relatives of U.S. citizens immigrated between FY 2017 and 2019 than if admissions remained at the same level as FY 2016. The entry ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries contributed to the decline.

Given the passage of the Laken Riley Act with Democratic support, Stephen Miller and other Trump officials will likely hope they can pass a bill through Congress that reduces legal immigration. One can expect efforts by Miller and colleagues to block the entry of Diversity Visa and family-sponsored immigrants through regulation or presidential proclamation or to eliminate the categories through legislation.

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen recently wrote, “Trump is a strong supporter of legal immigration.” He cites Trump’s campaign promise to offer green cards to international students who graduate from U.S. universities. Donald Trump showed no signs of wanting to increase legal immigration in his first term. Trump’s team has already taken steps to reduce legal immigration to the United States in his second term.

Source: Donald Trump’s Team Takes First Steps To Cut Legal Immigration

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Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

Captures the change and dangers all too well:

…Only the gatekeepers are now gone.

First, the press. A mainstream news ecosystem that was centered on cost and curation and powered by expertise (backed by civil liability) has been replaced by a “free” Attention Economy where “content” that provokes the quickest and biggest reaction wins the consequence-free prize of algorithmic amplification and the engagement (and monetization) it brings.

And the money is mostly on the Bongino side of the equation. It’s true that nobody ever really read the majority of the quality daily journalism produced by mainstream outlets; the sports, funny pages, horoscopes, and ads that used to come alongside that quality is what paid for it. Even so, under that model the people in power at least knew they were being scrutinised. 

Now you make money by what people are willing to click on — and that’s, by and large, not original journalism (even if, ahem, people are willing to pay for smart commentary). Now content creators make (big) money by mobbing up and preaching to the converted.

And this is the point of Bongino. He is there to activate his mob in support of his political master. This is also the point of Elon Musk, the serial entrepreneur and amateur ketamine and ambien enthusiast turned “efficiency” czar, who now has his fingers on the scales of information via his platform X in a way that news barons of old could only have dreamed of. They are the enforcers in Trump’s universe. They set an agenda by setting off unsourced fireworks in every direction and then watch as the universe is forced to react to their inaccurate insanities as their mobs pile in.

It’s a complete inversion of the old informational order. And it’s breaking us apart.

In the olden days, Bongino and Musk would have been the men at the end of the bar raging against the machine. They’d be the weird uncles at the family party the other family members did their best to avoid. Now they’re the stars of the show. They are tribunes for the end of the bar and weird uncle crowd, a crowd that can glom together without risking the embarrassment of floating their unorthodox views in crowds of random people. Bognino, Musk and Patel can all rage against the “deep state” and decry the treatment of groups like the January 6th rioters — and be handsomely rewarded for it.

Forget the FBI. It’s these men who are the real threat to liberty.

Source: Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

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McWhorter: An Unkind Policy for a Nonexistent Problem [English as official language]

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

More good commentary by McWhorter:

“You come here, you speak our language!”

That is the elevator-pitch version of one of President Trump’s latest executive orders.

In form, it undoes the requirement, instituted under the Clinton administration, that government agencies and organizations offer services and documents in various languages.

In spirit, it does much more — and much worse.

The “English only” idea goes way back. Benjamin Franklin worried about there being too much German spoken in our country. Theodore Roosevelt was on board as well, proclaiming in 1919, “We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” The organization U.S. English, founded by Senator S.I. Hayakawa and the anti-immigration activist John Tanton in the 1980s, has been especially persistent. The group argues that elevating English to official status gives us a common means of communication, encourages immigrants to assimilate and “defines a much-needed common-sense language policy.”

This is nonsense, because we already have a common means of communication: English.

Other languages are spoken in America as well, some even passed down through generations. But Americans use English as their lingua franca regardless of whatever else they speak.

In 19th-century Italy, it was a different story. Piedmontese to the north and Sicilian to the south had so little in common with Tuscan in the middle that they qualified as different languages altogether. What Italians had was what the Strother Martin character in the film “Cool Hand Luke” famously called a failure to communicate. So when the regions were unified into a single nation, elevating one dialect — Tuscan — above the others was necessary.

Not here. For one thing, it is unclear just where in this country Trump thinks people are being raised without the ability to communicate in English. All I can think of is Haredi Jewish communities, where life is conducted in Yiddish and some children do not really learn to speak English. But something tells me they are not the ones on Trump’s mind.

Then there’s the claim that this order will compel immigrants to learn English, and the implication that people who fail to do so are shirking a basic American duty. This attitude is based on ignorance about how people acquire language.

In our midteens — after the end of what linguists call the critical period — our ability to master a new language starts to atrophy. I once lived next door to a couple that had just arrived from Israel. Their 2-year-old knew no English at all and used to squeak “khatul!” whenever he saw the cute black cat I had back then. A few years later he sounded like Macaulay Culkin. That’s how it is for little kids. Those who start living in English at, say, 16 will learn to speak fluently but probably retain a slight accent, and when tired might flub the occasional idiom. Adults starting from zero encounter almost inevitable limits. A brilliant Slav I know came to North America at about 50. His English was great, but with a strong accent and a tendency now and then to render things the way his native language would, such as designating me “an early-waking-up person.” This was normal.

Learning a new language, after all, isn’t just a matter of dutifully memorizing the words for things; you also have to learn how to put them together. Example: A native Spanish speaker is learning English. She’s at an American club and wants to say, “The guy who brought me can’t dance!” (Quick, show music geeks, what’s that from?) First she has to know that the past tense of “bring” is not “bringed” but the hopelessly random “brought,” and that in English we put the direct object (“me”) after rather than before the verb. Or, the woman is a native English speaker at a club in Beijing, new to Mandarin but trying to say the same thing. In Mandarin she’d have to say, “The take-me-come-in-guy can’t dance.”

That’s all part of why immigrants in late middle age or beyond, if they live in communities where almost everyone speaks their native language, may never really find their footing in English. In my neighborhood, where I am frequently assumed to be Dominican, barbers address me in Spanish and older Latinos, especially women, approach me asking me to point them in the right dirección. According to the English-only idea, those older ladies are a problem in some way. How?

Imagine a native Mandarin speaker who is new or newish to English. Let’s say she can get by just fine while navigating a menu or engaging in brief exchanges. Grand. But if she were being admitted to a hospital, taking a citizenship test, voting or doing anything else involving detail or urgency, she would want to be able to use, hear or read her native language. To deny her that is pointless and unfeeling.

But that is precisely what Trump’s executive order will do. In all those settings where ordinary people interact with government functions, nonnative speakers will be forced to muddle through in English alone, regardless of whether that produces any clarity for them — or for the government branch in question.

The only silver lining to all this is that to a considerable extent, modern technology will render the new rule powerless. Google Translate and other apps can now translate straight from the page, as well as interpret between you and another speaker in real time. The executive order “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States” will largely kneel to the power of the iPhone.

But what matters is the spirit of the thing. The English language is under not the slightest threat in America, and providing services in other languages for adults past the critical period is kindness, not disloyalty. A punitive yawp that English be “official” in this country is jingoistic trash talk in the guise of statesmanship.

By the way (alerting the Oxford English Dictionary as well as the upcoming Oxford Dictionary of African-American English!), we now have an even earlier example of the use of “woke” than the one my colleague Emily Berch unearthed two weeks ago. On Sept. 12, 1925, the Black journalist C.F. Richardson wrote, “Until we wake up, ‘stay woke’ (meaning to stay on the job at all times) and exert our full strength and power for our best interests, we shall forever be regarded, and treated as human slaves by the governing class and those in official positions.” Thanks to Fred Shapiro for this discovery (and check out his New Yale Book of Quotations).

Oh — and as for the origin of “The guy who brought me can’t dance!” the answer is the 1941 musical “Best Foot Forward,” with songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and book by John Cecil Holm.

Source: An Unkind Policy for a Nonexistent Problem

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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