Tennessee: Nashville adopts 'English First' policy

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Feb. 7, 2007, 5:35PM

Nashville adopts `English First' policy

 2007 The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn.  Nashville's city council has voted to adopt English as
its official language, following similar moves by several smaller cities
around the country. After months of debate, the city's Metro Council voted
23-14 on Tuesday to approve the measure requiring all government
communications to be in English, except when multilingual communications
are required by federal rules or are needed "to protect or promote public
health, safety or welfare." The exceptions were added after the city
attorney contended that the bill's original language was unconstitutional.
Some supporters and opponents of the measure said the exceptions mean the
law would have little effect on city business.

The measure moves on to Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, who hadn't said by
Wednesday whether he will sign it, veto it or allow it to pass into law
without his signature. Bill sponsor Councilman Eric Crafton and his
supporters said the change offers an incentive for immigrants to learn
English. "This bill says we'll simply do the governmental business in
English,"  Crafton said. "If we shouldn't do it in English, I'd like for
somebody else to stand up and tell us what language we should conduct our
business in."

Opponents contend the new law would hurt the image of Nashville, which
bills itself as "Music City USA." "From our perspective, the job just got
a little tougher to prove to the world that Nashville is the inclusive
city it is," said Ralph Schulz, president of the Nashville Area Chamber of
Commerce. Nashville, a city of more than 600,000, is home to the nation's
largest Kurdish community and has been a resettlement site for refugees
from Africa and Southeast Asia. The Hispanic immigrant population also has
boomed, and researchers say Nashville's foreign-born population has grown
350 percent since 1990. Gregg Ramos, a Nashville attorney and
first-generation American who opposed the measure, said Nashville is the
largest city and the only state capital to pass such a law.

Smaller communities including Pahrump, Nev.; Taneytown, Md.; the Dallas
suburb of Farmers Branch and the Atlanta suburb of Cherokee County all
recently passed similar laws or resolutions. Twenty-eight states have
adopted English as their official language, including Arizona, where
voters approved a law last year, according to U.S. English Inc., a
Washington-based advocacy group.

The U.S. Senate's version of last year's failed immigration bill would
have made English the national language, but U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales said the measure would have been purely symbolic.

(Restores dropped 's' to city of Farmers Branch, and corrects that some
communities have passed resolutions, not laws.)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4534960.html

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