Republican Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson provided a stunning example of the stupidity of the English-only movement during a campaign stop in Iowa a few days ago, noted by Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. He assigned partial blame for the mortgage crisis to illegal immigrants, who, he alleges, get themselves into mortgages that they cannot afford because they lack sufficient knowledge of English to understand the terms, saying "A lot of them couldn't communicate with the people they were getting the mortgage from". He cited no evidence for this claim; to my knowledge there isn't any. Indeed, I wonder how many illegal immigrants are in a position to buy a home.
In the same exchange he agreed with a questioner that "it's sickening" that "everything is in Spanish" and said that English should be made the national language. That makes a lot of sense: if immigrants are causing problems through their lack of knowledge of English, make sure that they have even less opportunity to communicate by reducing the use of other languages. I like him better on Law and Order.
Update: Reader Nancy Jane Moore points to this report on how illegal immigrants are often good risks for mortgages.
Posted by Bill Poser at December 28, 2007 02:20 PM