Today, I had to call tech support. The woman who helped me was great at her job. She did all she could to maintain my business (I was closing my membership at a national gym club), but when I insisted I had quit on purpose, she got me the refund upon which I insisted (well, we'll see: 7-10 business days). She did an excellent job, and if I couldn't understand her accent much of the time, the fact that I'll be getting my money back makes that a great big nothing.

There are racists and xenophobes in this country who think I'm dead wrong. That I have to struggle to understand her accent is, to them, wrong. They may yap about outsourcing jobs, to cover their real intentions, but I have no idea if my call went to Guatemala, some pentitary in Texas, or a call center in Ames, Iowa. I got someone who had immaculate grammar and enunciation, just overlaid with an accent the result of growing up speaking Spanish.

I don't care where she was. She did her job right. If this was a job some American lost, it wasn't her fault. To point at those for whom English is a new or second language as if they were doing something wrong or harmful is, I believe, hateful and unAmerican. The ancestors of most, if not many, Americans spoke bad English. If any at all. They learned, to varying degrees, and they worked hard to take care of their families and get their kids into schools. Their children spoke fine English (however crummy their grammar may have been). That's how long it takes: a single generation. The children of immigrants know the langauge, and their accents are not impediments to understanding.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, Barack Obama spoke in English to a crowd we can presume was mostly German. He spoke in English, directly and without translation, not because the whole world needs to understand English or tough luck, but because much of the world does understand English. Certainly in Germany and the rest of Europe, English is an extremely common second language.

Too bad so many Americans adamantly refuse to return the favor.

Worse, by promoting English-only laws, we not only make acquisition of English more difficult — children are forced to struggle in their early years with a language they don't know and are unable to get the necessary early grasp on other vital aspects of their education, including acculturization — we are telling the rest of the world we have no respect for their languages, their cultures, their people. We make worse the divisions and enmities that are part of the process of developing hate and desperation which, in turn, feed the terrorist networks with allies and willing martyrs. English-only makes American uglier and less safe.

I'm happy the woman who helped me this afternoon has this job. I hope she is somewhere in this country speaking her heavily-accented English. I want to hear more such voices in my daily, normal life. I want to see my city and country becoming part of the world, not merely running roughshod over it.

I want to see the day when the Chancellor of Germany or Spanish premier or French president can come to my country, speak in their own language, and we'll stand and cheer the words directly.