1115.org

It has a nice ring to it. At least as catchy as taxation without representation. And it’s being trotted out to explain why the governor of Utah was right to shut down a state-owned Spanish language information website:

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a champion of Utah taking its place in the global economy, finds himself in an awkward position after shutting down a state-owned online information site because it is in Spanish.

Huntsman’s spokesman Mike Mower says the site will remain down until the governor’s legal counsel can determine if its translations of basic state information violate a 2000 Utah law that makes English the state’s official language.

But critics say Huntsman overreacted to a xenophobic backlash that followed the recent visit of Mexican President Vicente Fox and that continues to be fueled by the immigration reform debate.
[…]
Neither www.utah.gov nor its Spanish-language counterpart are supported with taxpayer money. “We absorbed the cost of this project,” said Hope Miller, spokeswoman for Utah Interactive, which maintains the state Web site. “It did not cost the state of Utah anything.”

Utah Interactive collects transaction fees from businesses and individuals that use the service, she said, and the Spanish-language version was helpful because it made the site useful to more customers.
[…]
But Phyllis Sears, chairwoman of the Citizens Council on Illegal Immigration, says the complaints about the Spanish language Web site are coming from citizens who are increasingly sensitive to the problems of immigration. “Most people recognize immigration is not bad. But immigration without assimilation, both in language and in culture, could be a terrible disaster for this nation,” Sears said. “That’s what they are protesting.”

Ms. Sears obviously subscribes to a different creation myth from what I was taught in school. The version they got away with feeding me (because I didn’t know any better at that age) was that the first immigrants didn’t in fact learn the Native American language or even begin to try to assimilate into the Native American culture. And I don’t remember anyone ever telling me whether they were legal immigrants, or whether they just crossed the border and barged right in. Maybe Ms. Sears went to some fancy private school and got herself a better education than they hand out in public schools? I guess you get what you pay for, huh?