To the Editor:
After reading your recent newsletter and getting to the very last page, I was taken aback by the large caption of A Sua Saude.
Right now, 21.3 million people cannot speak English well—an alarming increase of 52 percent just since 1990. Is this the America most of us want? I don’t think so.
It would behoove you to revisit the words of President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to the American Defense Society in 1919, 10 years after he left the White House:
“In the first place we should insist that is the immigrant who comes here in good faith, becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But it is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact…nothing but American…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people.”
Thanks for your attention to this important matter. Immigrants must learn English and having another language positioned on your newsletter does not foster any learning.
Sincerely,
Angela M. LeBeau,
Sandwich
Dear Ms. LeBeau:
For space reasons, I have abridged your Theodore Roosevelt quotation, but the gist remains.
I want to thank you for your letter because I appreciate your interest (and the complimentary fact that you made it to the back page) and also because it gives me an opportunity to explain our policy.
To Your Good Health is a service publication. This means reaching out to all elements of the population. We would not want any of our neighbors to miss out on the opportunity to maintain the good health of themselves or their children because they were unable to read English. And what if the disease your next-door neighbor might have caught through ignorance of English turned out to be contagious?
Finally, we might actually be serving the educational purpose you propose. The vast majority of our publication is in English. One hopes the newcomers to our circulation area will be encouraged to learn the language so they’ll find out what they’re missing.
The Editor