First, it sets more specific goals for the tests used by the Department of Homeland Security that are supposed to ensure that naturalization candidates understand U.S. history and the English language. Under the amendment, prospective citizens would learn about "key" U.S. documents and historical events, such as the Declaration, the Constitution, all the great wars, the civil rights movement, and court cases and acts of Congress exemplifying American democracy.

Secondly, prospective citizens would need to demonstrate a "sufficient understanding of the English language for usage in everyday life."

The amendment also curtails President Clinton's Executive Order 13166, which instructed all federal agencies and grantees to ensure that their programs were available to all comers in whatever their native language. This order effectively made the provision of federal services in foreign languages an entitlement.

While Inhofe's amendment eliminates that entitlement, it lets stand all current and prospective foreign-language provisions specifically authorized by Congress, including the bilingual ballot provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Inhofe's amendment is a positive step because it reverses a trend that has made it ever easier for immigrants from non-English-speaking lands to never master the language that has united Americans since before the founding.

The Census Bureau's 2004 American Community Survey provides data that can enlighten debate on this topic. It ranked 70 U.S. cities by the percentage of people 5 years or older who can speak English "less than very well." Santa Ana, Calif., ranked first. More than 58 percent of its residents were unable to speak English very well. Miami ranked second, with 49 percent. Los Angeles, a city of 3.8 million, ranked third, with 32.1 percent -- well more than a million people -- unable to speak English very well.

Inhofe's amendment may help bring these numbers down and keep America united by a common language -- a point 11 Democrats understood when they crossed party lines to join 52 Republicans in approving it.

Reid's accusation that the amendment is "racist" was a crude effort to divide people along linguistic lines for partisan advantage. If anything said in the Senate last week was divisive and un-American, it came from the lips -- if not the brain -- of the minority leader.