It's about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn't stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York's small version of Arizona in the immigration wars.The law designates English as the town's official written and spoken language, "to be used in all official meetings and business conducted by the elected officials and their appointees." Why did they even bother?
Or that's how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson - which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers - decided it needed a law requiring that all town business be conducted in English.
You can thank a concerned citizen named Roger Meyer, the Town Council member who proposed the law. I guess he just loves English that much. Of course, the law has already drawn the ire of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which says it violates state and federal law.
Welcome to Jackson, where nobody ever even gave a crap about this issue in the first place. I wonder when the last time was anyone ever used a language other than English for official town business. Talk about pointless legislation.