The recent demonstrations focusing attention on the problems of immigration and immigrant status could be the entree to one of those longed-for national discussions I always imagine us having in a less-bunkered world. In my utopian dream, we'd be discussing whether the nation-state is anachronistic in an age of borderless global corporate influence. We'd be concerning ourselves with the balance between a nationalistic call for immigrants to assimilate completely and the desire of many refugees to freely express their cultural identity after having fled someplace else on the globe where they were persecuted precisely for that identity. We would be examining the degree of overlap between our guarantees of civil rights and international notions of human rights. We'd ask if it's really a good idea to suspend the protections of workplace and environmental laws--either domestically or abroad, in the guise of Free Trade Zones--with no thought to long-term consequences. And whether we really have the means or desire to deport the 12 million undocumented people currently living within our borders.

So we have important issues to address. Given that full menu, it is somewhat surprising that We the People are apparently obsessed with whether the singing of the national anthem in Spanish is an affront to our Union. Indeed, this has become such a pressing issue that the Senate spent actual taxpayer time to craft and pass a resolution condemning the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" in any language but English. The matter has gone all the way to top levels of the White House, where President Bush took time from pondering insurrection, economic collapse, terrorism and nuclear threat to opine that "The Star Spangled Banner" just does not have the same "value" when sung in Spanish.

It is an odd stance for a President who, when campaigning for office, sang the national anthem in Spanish wholeheartedly when he visited Latino districts. And it is surely an odd stance for a government whose own websites list translations of the song into many languages--for the protectorates, presumably, rather than for those whose feet actually rest upon the sod of the mainland Homeland.

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