Australia, or, more specifically, the ever-infuriating John Howard, wants to impose a test of proficiency in English as a requirement for citizenship (he also wants to test ‘Australian Values’, but the idea is just too ludicrous to spend any more time on).
I remembered reading Mike Carlton’s take on the concept of language proficiency tests in Australian history and stumbled upon a particular case that I thought must have been a joke. Alas, it turns out to be factual.
Australia’s immigration policy while Howard’s hero, Robert Menzies was Attorney General, included a clause (section 3(a) of the Immigration Act of 1901) that immigrants and visitors could be subject to a dictation test in an unspecified European language. If you don’t believe me, here‘s a facsimile of the act itself.
This wasn’t used much, it seems, but in 1934, an anti-fascist, anti-war Czech intellectual by the name of Egon Kisch arrived in the country. As this was back in the good ol’ days when Australia was (more) fond of fascistic policies like White Australia and Eugenics (before its name was tainted by Hitler), Kisch was considered to be an undesirable and subsequently subjected to the dictation test.
Kisch was fluent in a number of languages, including Czech (naturally), German and English. So testing him in one of these languages wouldn’t have done the trick. He was in fact tested, I’m not kidding, in Highland Scottish Gaelic, a language that was spoken at the time by only 1 in every 600 Scots.
Anyway, enough of that nonsense and back to reality. The test of English proficiency is only good for the government, which seems to be pretty good at getting re-elected by demonising minorities (remember Tampa?). And there is no better minority for this purpose than people who don’t speak English.
If I am wrong about the government’s motives and they nobly want people speaking more English, then wonderful, I would fully support such a policy. But surely a far better way to do it would be to fund English language courses for those whose English proficiency is less than some desired level. Without providing such support, the government cannot reasonably reject someone’s claim to citizenship and base it on the applicant’s language ability.
There are problems though. Most notably is that the government’s entire socio-political philosophy boils down to user-pays, which would preclude the public funding of English language courses. They would therefore be prohibitively expensive for most of those whom they are intended to help. Even if they were publicly funded, there would be people who work a number of jobs to support a family starting out in a new country and cannot spare the time to learn English.
At the end of the day, is it entirely necessary to be fluent in English to live in Australia? I don’t think it is. I mean, it’s probably be beneficial to speak the official language, but given the multilingual nature of urban life these days, I’d consider it entirely avoidable. By way of an example, Centrelink offers many of its services in 66 spoken languages as well as Auslan. Moreover, there have been periods of large immigration into Australia numerous times in the past, in which very large populations of people spoke very little English. I would hazard a guess that not speaking the official language back then would have been a lot more problematic than it is now. So why impose such a citizenship test now?
Basically, I’m going to resort to my usual, but historically impeccable cynicism of this government and assume that they’re planning on another socially divisive issue of Tampesque proportions in order to win yet another election. They will vilify some of Australia’s most disadvantaged inhabitants; migrant workers who, for one reason or another, do not speak English as well as the ethnic majority. Is anyone else reminded of an episode of The Simpsons?
Immighants! Immighants! I knew it was dem! -Moe
December 15, 2006 at 10:48 am
Sometimes articles i read at uni stick in my mind and one of those was a very interesting study done in canada of two migrants English acquisition – two middle aged women, one polish, one vietnamese – one of the findings was that implicit racism in canadian society impeded the vietanmese women (and her family’s) English acquisition. As the racism wasn’t as evident for the polish women she didn’t have the same difficulties.
So another tactic John Howard could take would be to be more actively in eradicating racism in Australia in order to foster a positive atmosphere for migrants to acquire English. Unfortunately, I don’t quite see Mr. Coward embracing this philosophy.
Also, migrants do receive a lot of free English tuition courtesy of the government – something like 500 hours.
December 22, 2006 at 8:06 pm
If you go to DIMA’s websiteyou learn
“The following categories of people are eligible [for “free English classes”]:
–newly-arrived migrants or humanitarian entrants from overseas;
–migrants who arrived in Australia after 1 July 1991;
–temporary residents who hold a gazetted visa class;
–people who have been granted permanent residence in Australia since July 1991.”
But what they don’t mention is that, according to the NSW AMES it is NOT
exactly free – spouses get in free, but skilled and business migrants must pay “the English Education Charge (2nd Instalment) of approx A$ 2630 to DIMIA”). Looking through the website finds other little gotchas like:
“Visa charge 2nd instalment Only relevant for dependents aged 18 years or over with less than functional English $2,765”
OK it’s still a lot cheaper than paying full AMES $10/hour for 510 hours.
Oh, and of course if you are living in the community waiting for refugee status to be determined you aren’t entitled to any free English classes – that’s why some religious and social action groups have been running voluntary English classes for such people.
January 3, 2007 at 12:26 am
Jaŋari, this was part of the White Australia Policy, the first piece of legislation passed by the Commonwealth Government in Melbourne in 1901.
March 1, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Of course, it would be entertaining (and cost-cutting) if instead of spending all that money on P.R spin, training, etc implementing the silly policy, they just put up a huge screen in every international airport with a large projection of Samuel L. Jackson on a perpetual loop, shouting
“ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?”
March 1, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Well, Cooper, that was a bit out of left-field, but I love a good Pulp Fiction reference.
“Mm! that is a tasty burger!”
January 25, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I came across this surfing Google
November 17, 2010 at 4:21 am
learning english is quite easy, there arem any tutorials on the internet and some audiobooks too “`.