Sound familiar? That’s “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Yiddish, translated by Abraham Asen. The Educational Alliance, an agency that helped generations of Jewish immigrants adapt to the New World, released the translation in 1943 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the death of Francis Scott Key. Could anyone view Asen’s effort and consider it anything but a noble patriotic gesture?

Well, President Bush could. Asked to comment on a new Spanish-language version of the national anthem last week, the president offered this terse review: “I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.”

True enough, but does “Nuestro Himno,” the Spanish translation of the anthem, in any way deflect from that worthy goal? For all the talk of immigrants “refusing” to learn English and the perils of bilingual education, study after study reveals that bilingualism is at best a one-generation phenomenon, and that the newcomers’ children quickly adopt English as their own.

The president’s remarks seemed less of a salvo in the bilingualism debate, however, than a sop to the anti-immigrant talk radio crowd. If so, that’s a mistake. Immigration reform needs a sober debate, and both sides need to acknowledge the serious issues that demand bipartisan solutions. Undocumented immigrants do deserve a chance to participate openly in a society that they help build with their labor, while American citizens deserve an honest accounting of the undeniable impact of immigration on wages, health care, and social services.

That debate is not served by demagoguery, and the president, who has demonstrated in the past that he is sensitive and circumspect on immigration issues, should know better.

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