President Trump issued an Executive Order declaring the U.S. Government should conduct its business in English. That order elicited the usual complaints from the secular accompaniment chorus, who thought it exclusionary and impeding peoples’ access to services.

As we’ve seen in pictures from a deportation, it’s not infrequent that family members interviewed after a long-term illegal has been detained speak to the press in Spanish. They’re lamenting their loved one has been detained after “20 years working in America.” Well, after two decades, we see no evidence of acquiring the language of the country whose prosperity the illegals seek to enjoy.

Recently, an illegal alien — licensed by sanctuary state California — killed three people in Florida while driving a truck. Lest one think complaints about language proficiency are dog whistles against Latinos, note that the driver was from India (and he still had issues with English). Meanwhile, the usual suspects are complaining about the Transportation Department enforcing English ability on the part of truckers.

There have long been efforts at the federal level legally to define English as the national language — including by Constitutional amendment. The usual suspects ensured those federal efforts went nowhere. Frustrated, various states have tried to accomplish this statutorily, often to be frustrated by court injunctions. This needs to stop.

Let me personalize this problem. I spent last Friday at a garage. I planned on getting my son’s brakes replaced but the problem got compounded when the 20-year-old radiator gave out while my wife was driving. It was an eight hour day at the garage. Carlos was my mechanic. The problem is: he doesn’t speak English. So, every conversation as to what was wrong, what needed replacement, what could be deferred, and so on, went through a cell phone conversation: Carlos to the station owner en español, then Mr. K to me.

There’s something wrong with that picture.

Obviously, car-repair-by-delayed-interpretation is inefficient and deters a real discussion. I should be able to have a thorough, free-flowing conversation about my car problems and alternative ways of addressing them. In theory, the Left will tell me that my “consumer rights” include full disclosure, answers, etc. But the same Left won’t demand my “service provider” speak my language. Don’t tell me about my “car repair rights” in a language I don’t understand. It’s like the electronic products you used to buy in the early 1980s that came with instructions… in Japanese. (At least IKEA’s “build-it-yourself” brochures are Swedish and English.)

This is not “intolerance,” “xenophobia,” or “lack of welcome.” It is an imbalanced approach to immigration that even the Church abets. The Church abets it when it constantly speaks of “immigrants’ rights,” “justice for immigrants,” and “welcome for immigrants” as parts of Catholic social teaching while, at the same time, giving lip service if not ignoring other parts of that teaching. Like the legitimate expectation that a foreigner becoming a permanent resident in another country assimilate to that country. Like the right of a state to limit immigration based on its assessment of its successful socio-cultural absorption of foreigners. Like the right of a people to their culture in their country.

The most basic element of assimilation and culture is language: normal social interaction presupposes talking. It’s why the Gospels frequently feature the Lord opening the mouths of mutes. The inability to speak is sometimes not an organic handicap; it can be simply linguistic.

Poland and Germany are neighbors. The Polish state formed in the 10^th century in Central Europe alongside other Slavs, primarily the Czechs and Slovaks. Kiev Rus, another Slavic state (Moscow at this time was a forest) was forming on the plains of today’s Ukraine. The Slavic peoples more or less could understand each other. But, when they interacted with Germans — a completely different language family — well, it resulted in Poles giving the country English speakers call “Germany” the name Niemiec. Niemiec comes from the adjective niemy — “mute” — because the radical language difference constituted a barrier that, in practice, rendered Germans “mute” when it came to interacting with their Slavic neighbors.

There’s something wrong in America when a considerable part of the population living on this territory — people whom the Left (and the Church) push to have a “comprehensive pathway to citizenship” — are niemy, “mute” vis-à-vis the nation in which they want to live. No “social contract” can be formed if there is no common language in which to write it. That’s true whether we are talking about ballots, government services, or what’s wrong with the car radiator.