RPV: Nosotros Creemos…
By Greg L | 11 June 2007 | PWCRC, Virginia Politics | 16 Comments
I’m sure this is going to just make Spanish-speaking voters flood to support the Republican Party of Virginia: The RPV website has posted a Spanish version of the Republican creed. There’s no other Spanish content on the website as far as I can tell, so it’s not clear to me just how those who speak Spanish as their primary language are supposed to find this gem. If they do manage to stumble through the links and land on this, they’ll be happy to see that the creed is presented in their native language, however. What an outreach program…
If RPV actually was going to do some outreach like this, it would be a heck of a lot more credible if it just created a Spanish version of the site. Yes, it’s more work, but half-measures (this might be a little less than a half-measure) don’t typically yield good results. You’re either serious about it, or you’re faking it, and this looks a lot more like the latter than it does the former.
What might be more consistent with Republican values would be a page that would plead with Spanish-speakers to learn English. There just isn’t any way to fully participate in the political process, or have much of a shot at the American Dream unless you speak our language. While other political parties might think that it’s considerate to accommodate people who cannot speak our language with taxpayer dollars, what that accommodation really ends up doing is relegating way too many people to second-class citizenship and perpetuating poverty and a whole host of other significant social and economic problems. A Republican value, at least in my opinion, is that we should encourage the hard work it takes for all of our immigrants to master the English language, because that personal effort yields tremendous benefits. I would imagine that a lot of Virginia Republicans feel the same way.
RPV apparently isn’t quite getting this. I have no word on whether RPV intends to follow this up by publishing the Republican Creed in Urdu, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and Haitian as well, or whether they’re going to start promoting the Republican value that an individual’s personal efforts exerted on a fair and level playing field are what determine our personal success in life. That, or they’re going to have to hire a lot of translators.
UPDATE: Wouldn’t you know, the Prince William County Republican Committee’s website does the same. Given what we’ve seen in new membership outreach lately, I think they picked the wrong language, though.
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Many Iranians live in McClean, what about Farsi? Many Vietnamese live in Arlington, what about that?
Many of the immigrants who are citizens are going to think it is patronizing and demeaning to have it written in their own language.
The immigrants striving to become American and they want to speak English.
There are many people from the Philippines who live in Prince William County. My husband is from Vietnam. They all had to learn English from day one. It upsets them that the government caters to the Spanish community. It gives them special status. I think our political parties forget that the people who are here legally learned English and I’m afraid that these Spainish language websites and recordings at government offices are alienating legal immigrants. These legal immigrants became citizens and they VOTE!!!
Anon,
You are right. There are other foreign languages that are spoken in Virginia, yet Spanish seems to be the one that gets all of the attention. I say there should be a web page version for every single language that might be spoken in Virginia. Whats that? It might cost too much? Well, then the simple solution is to have the page only in one language, English.
I guess the VA GOP things that members of the MS13 gang will vote for GOP because part of the website is in Spanish.
Lets review, in order to be a legal voter in Virginia, one must be a United States Citizen. In order to be a United States Citizen, a person must show at least a basic ability to read, write and speak English. The message of the GOP(at least I think it still might be this) is lower taxes, less crime, smaller Government, pro-life, and a stronger military. How difficult is that to read or understand? Pretty basic stuff. Yet, the yahoos at the VA GOP believe that needs to be provided in a foreign language.
And the thing is there ARE large numbers of Spanish speakers who want to learn English. If there weren’t we wouldn’t be seeing the “English for Spanish speaker” courses being advertised on the Spanish channels. If there’s money to be made, the product will appear.
Pander, pander, pander. The GOP can be so stupid sometimes.
But then again they ARE politicians.
Well, if you check the PWCRC site, you’ll see the Spanish version of the creed as well.
Right you are, and they even manage to mis-spell the first word.
Bush is trying to save the immigration bill where 12 million will be legalized without the need to learn the English language.
I want to learn the language of the Khalahari Bushman. That way when addressing a government official, or even ordering a Big Mac, I can do it in clicks and pops. When they don’t understand me, I can get all indignant, and yell that they need to accomodate me. I want voter forms printed in “bushman” too.
I am voting for “click-clock-tick-nock” for Sheriff on Tuesday!
Which word is misspelled?
Nosotros? That’s the correct spelling.
I guess you’re right, and my Spanish is bad. Not too surprising.
Kopko pandering to the illegals should not surprise anyone. Next will be urdu to accomodate his mid-east freinds.
It’s what MANY MANY people across the nation are finally beginning to understand:
It’s the PARTY, stupid!! PEOPLE: we need to close our checkbooks and wallets to curb this lunacy…
Until then, enrollment in the 12-step program for recovering republicans will continue to sky-rocket!!
I am going to steal that line - recovering Republicans.
Channel 23 is now broadcasting in Spanish, not sure when this started. If we can accomodate hispanics then we should accomodate everyone’s desires and I want to see the Planning Commission televised, hell I’ll settle for a web cast and pay for the web cam.
Ari Stotle,
Channel 23 in Spanish?? Does this include all programming? Is the School Board also doing this? This is horrible. I know people have the Dish over cable, and they are legal, taxpaying citizens and they are not able to watch the County info channel. They go to friends houses with cable to be informed on PWC. I think many legal taxpaying citizens would like to see all County meetings aired. What more can they(PWC) do to accomadate hispanics? Is PWC, trying to get 5 diamond or 4 star accomodation rating with the illegals? ENOUGH ALREADY. Last time I looked at map, it said Manassas was in the USA.
Do you want every one in the USA to speak English!
Become a volunteer and teach ESL!