Is this much ado about nothing?
In some areas of SE Michigan there are neighborhoods where most of the signs are in Arabic or Spanish. I didn't know that Queens was an "Asian town" as one person describes it in the article. 
In Neighborhood That’s Diverse, a Push for Signs to Be Less So
By DAN BILEFSKYTaiwanese herbal remedy shops peddle elixirs for indigestion and impotence on storefront signs awash in Chinese characters. Nearby, Shiseido cosmetics boutiques advertise their wares in Japanese. And the imposing Ganesh Temple, one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States, greets visitors in Hindi script.
Flushing, Queens, is one of New York’s most polyglot immigrant neighborhoods. But a member of the City Council, who is known by some as the unofficial mayor of Flushing, is railing against the dominance of Chinese, Korean and other foreign languages on storefronts.
The council member, Peter Koo, is no would-be Archie Bunker. He is a Chinese-American who grew up in Hong Kong and is proud of his Asian roots.
Mr. Koo said that diminishing the proper role of English on signs threatened to alienate non-Asian customers and residents. He is proposing a measure that would require all storefront signs to be at least 60 percent English. Businesses would face fines if they did not comply.
“This is America, no? If I go to a Polish neighborhood and only see Polish signs, I would not be comfortable,” said Mr. Koo, a Republican. “New York is a city of immigrants, and English is a way for different ethnic groups to communicate.”
He added that the legislation was needed so that police officers and firefighters could quickly identify stores in case of an emergency.
Mr. Koo, 58, who owns a chain of drugstores in Flushing, arrived in the United States nearly 40 years ago. He taught himself English working as a cook at Kentucky Fried Chicken while he was at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy.
He wants inspectors with the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs to enforce an obscure state law, passed in 1933, that requires businesses to display their names in English. The law was intended to protect consumers from fraud by underground shops during the Depression, but it has seldom been applied.
His proposals have divided multiethnic Queens, where nearly 120 languages are spoken; Flushing itself has one of the largest Asian communities in the country, outside of California.
Opponents say the measures are not needed because there is English on most signs.
Timothy Chuang, owner of Tung Ren Tang, an herbal remedy shop, is chairman of the Downtown Flushing Business Improvement District, which represents local businesses. He said imposing a “predominantly English” requirement on signs would undermine ethnic diversity in Flushing, which was once predominantly Jewish and Italian, but shifted when Asian immigrants arrived, first from Japan, then from Taiwan and, in the 1980s, from mainland China.
Mr. Chuang, whose storefront awning features giant Chinese characters that dwarf the Roman characters above it, agreed that all signs should have some English. But he said a requirement of 60 percent would force him to spend up to $5,000 for a new sign that 95 percent of his customers might not understand.
The move, he added, threatened to frighten off Chinese customers, many of them immigrants too embarrassed to speak English. “Why should the English be bigger when this is an Asian town?” he asked. “If that happens, Queens will stop being Queens.”
Other opponents said requiring that signs be mostly in English would clash with the values of their adopted homeland. “This is America,” said Hyung Chong, a Korean restaurant manager from Seoul. “We should have the right to put up whatever sign we want.”...
Complete NYT Article
