The Minutemen expect to patrol four states in the month of October, on both the Northern and Southern borders. If you want to participate, you can sign up here:Register as a Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Border Watch Volunteer.

K. C. McAlpin, Executive Director of Pro English, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for making English America’s official language said that he may support legal action against the Dallas Independent School District for its recent vote that will require some principals to learn Spanish.

Under the terms of the school district’s decision, in certain schools where the Hispanic enrollment is high, principals would be mandated to learn Spanish within three years.

[Dallas County Requires School Administrators to Learn Spanish or Else; Texas Plan Gives Principals Three Years]

McAlpin said that the school board has its priorities backwards, explaining:

“If the Dallas schools are failing in their responsibility to teach school children to speak English because they continue putting them in bilingual classrooms, the school board should address that failure rather than accommodate it by forcing school administrators to learn the students’ language.”

I am reminded of the Stockton Unified School District in California where, several years ago, administrators discussed the idea of forcing teachers to learn southeast Asian languages like Cambodian, Laotian, etc.

But the idea died out when the administrators realized that no one in California taught those languages.

And there was the additional problem of classroom demographic turnover. That is, while a teacher’s class may be predominantly Vietnamese this year but by the time she mastered Vietnamese several years down the road, her classroom might have consisted mostly of Russian speakers.

Let’s hope the Dallas case, through legal action if necessary, meets the same fate as Stockton’s ill-conceived plan.

Despite the blitherings of defeatists willing to expand H-1b Guest Worker visas to contain illegal immigration, it appears the Bush administration is caving in on the topic of border enforcement-at least rhetorically-without such concessions.[Bush gives in to pressure over illegal migrants By Francis Harris in Washington, Telegraph, UK]

The claim that “Right-wing critics say the only workable solution is to punish American firms employing illegal migrants.” ignores the range of opinion on this topic. Gaylord Nelson, Barbara Jordan, A. Philip Randolph, and David Brower are not examples of “right wing critics”.

Border security enhancement is an important step-but it is far from certain that Bush and Chertoff can be trusted on this point. They’ve had lots of time to address this issue. Why now? Furthermore, minimizing the side effects of enforcement of immigration law is going to become even more important. I also expect we have only seen the start of populist outrage against the wealthy US elites that have profited from the practice of illegal immigration-and immigration expansion in general.
Bush’s about face is not without reservations among immigration restrictionists:

“If you have a boat with numerous holes in it, the boat will sink unless you plug all of the holes effectively,”said Michael W. Cutler, a former senior immigration enforcement special agent who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington research group. “He is only addressing a few of the holes, meaning he may slow the flow but it will not solve the problem in the long run.” [Homeland Security Chief Tells of Plan to Stabilize Border, By Eric Lipton, NYT, August 24, 2005]