U.S. English, Inc. Chairman Condemns new “Spanish National Anthem”

Statement by U.S. English, Inc. Chairman Mauro E. Mujica

“While Americans openly accept the sharing of their icons, they will not stand for actions which change those symbols to suit others’ purposes. Nuestro Himno takes a song that has bound generations of Americans, and changes its words and language to promote a political agenda. It is the wrong message, and I join Americans from all backgrounds in rejecting it.

“For more than 200 years, immigrants from all over the world have come together, learned English and become Americans. They have learned our history and our anthem, and treasure our flag just as much as native-born Americans do. At baseball games and patriotic events, they sing our anthem side-by-side with people they have never met before.

“If this were merely a creative way to bring our national anthem to newcomers to our nation, Nuestro Himno would be a commendable effort. But in its lyrics and its language, this song is a wholesale altering of the anthem’s unifying message. If these artists truly believe that message, they would sing the same national anthem as their fellow Americans, not create a separate anthem.

“We also cannot ignore the context in which these albums appear. At the first of the mass rallies demanding the legalization of illegal immigrants, flags of foreign countries outnumbered American flags. While event organizers have subsequently scrubbed these counterproductive images, the foreign flags suggested something other than a total embrace of the United States. A re-written national anthem that is sung in a foreign language is a similar symbol that demands that the United States embrace immigrants on their terms, rather than the other way around.”

U.S. English, Inc. is the nation's oldest and largest non-partisan citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. Founded in 1983 by the late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa of California, U.S. English, Inc. (www.usenglish.org) now has more than 1.8 million members.