Union Protests BellSouth "Vanish if You Can't Speak Spanish" Policy
Grass roots English activists joined with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at a May 31st rally in Miami, Florida, to protest Bell South's employment policies that the union claims are biased in favor of Spanish speakers. CWA local president Tony Dorado pointed to a recent BellSouth decision to close its English speaking collections center in the Miami area while keeping only Spanish speaking employees as evidence of the company's discriminatory practices.

Dorado said 50 to 60 BellSouth employees would be affected adding, "It's unthinkable that what's not acceptable in America is acceptable at BellSouth. The company admitted plans to retain its multilingual employees, but said the issue was "about job skills," and that the center's closing simply reflected a redeployment of company resources in a more competitive business environment. A BellSouth representative added that the union was "bringing in an ethnic question when one doesn't even remotely apply."
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Idaho Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Official English
Over 83 percent of Idaho residents favor making English the official language according to a statewide poll released in May. Despite the overwhelming support, a bill introduced by State Senator Sheila Sorensen (R-13), S.1469, stalled when self-appointed leaders of various ethnic groups in the state pressured legislators to oppose the bill.

Far from being an “English only” bill, S. 1469 made common sense exceptions for the state to use other languages to protect the health and safety of Idaho residents, for tourism, law enforcement, and foreign language instruction. ProEnglish chairman Bob Park said, “One again, we witness the sorry spectacle of cowardly politicians who are afraid to stand up for the common sense desires of the vast majority of citizens on official English for fear of being labeled politically incorrect. I urge the people of Idaho to redouble their efforts to enact an official English bill and join the 27 other states who have already acted.”
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ON CAPITOL HILL:
    Bush Administration's Opposition Dims     Hopes for Congressional Action on     ProEnglish Legislation
Despite a huge outpouring of grassroots support and strong congressional backing for a number of bills that are critical to the official English movement, hopes are fading that Congress will consider one of these important bills before it has to adjourn for this session. The reason: behind the scenes opposition from the Bush Administration.

ProEnglish sources on Capitol Hill say that the Administration’s opposition has made House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) as well as GOP committee chairmen with relevant jurisdiction reluctant to schedule any of these bills for votes. The reasoning is that even if the House were to pass one of these bills, without strong backing from the Administration, such a bill would never be considered by the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats. This creates a difficult “Catch-22” argument for ProEnglish and the official English movement to overcome in trying to persuade Congress to act.

Among the important bills languishing because of this are three bills with large numbers of co-sponsors that otherwise would have been strong candidates for consideration. These include: HR 969 – a bill by Rep. Bob Stump (R-AZ) with 69 co-sponsors that would revoke Executive Order 13166, HR 280 – a bill by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) with 47 co-sponsors that would make English the official language, and HR 3333 – another bill by Rep. Bob Stump that would make English the official language and do other important things like repealing bilingual ballots.

ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park commented, “It is really a travesty that despite poll after poll showing the American people overwhelmingly in favor of making English the official language, President Bush is willing even to rebuff the leaders of his own party in Congress to prevent an official English bill from being passed.” He added, “I can promise him this, the movement to declare English our official language is not going away. And we will continue to fight until English’s role as the unifying language of our country is secure.”
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    Gephardt Says Democrats Are Leading
    the Fight Against Official English
Speaking before an annual conference of the National Council of La Raza (i.e. “the Race”) in Miami, Florida on July 23, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) said, “Democrats in Congress have always supported the issues that are important to the Latino population. We opposed Proposition 187 in California [the 1994 initiative barring welfare for illegal immigrants-ed.] and we led the drive against English-only initiatives across the country and in Congress.”

The National Council of La Raza is a Hispanic pressure group with a history of support for extreme left wing causes including racial preferences and set-asides for favored ethnic groups, official multilingualism, cradle-to-the-grave welfare entitlements, and mass immigration. Independent polls have consistently shown that the group’s views are out of step with the vast majority of Hispanic Americans on many issues including the need to preserve English as our common language.

And while its true that Representative Gephardt voted against the official English bill when it passed the House in 1996 by a vote of 257 to 166, 36 of his fellow Democrats or almost 1 in 5 voted for it.

Gephardt delivered his speech in the context of an appeal for Hispanic votes for the Democratic Party’s candidates in the upcoming 2002 election. He also used the occasion to announce his plan to introduce a bill that would give legal status and eventual citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants. Observers speculated that the congressman was trying to position himself to appeal for Hispanic support in preparation for seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in the 2004 election.
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      Rep. Bob Stump, Fighter for Official     English, Retires from House
Rep. Bob Stump (R-AZ), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and one of the strongest supporters of official English in Congress, surprised and stunned many people including ProEnglish leaders when he announced in June that he was retiring at the end of his current term due to “serious health problems.”

Responding to the news, ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park said, “For years Representative Bob Stump has been one of our most reliable and effective allies in the battle to preserve English as our common language and make it the official language of government. We are terribly saddened by the news that he has been forced to give up his public service career because of his health. On behalf of ProEnglish and its 50,000 members, I want to express our sincere gratitude for Rep. Stump’s service to our nation and the official English movement. We have lost a great champion whose presence will be deeply missed. He was my Representative for the past 23 years and I consider Bob Stump a true American Patriot.”

Rep. Stump was the author and leading sponsor of HR 3333, the strongest and most comprehensive bill yet introduced to make English the official language of the United States. He also led the fight in Congress to overturn Executive Order 13166, the order mandating multilingual government services that was signed by President Clinton. His bill, HR 969, to revoke E.O. 1366, had gathered the bipartisan support of 69 cosponsors and probably would have been considered were it not for the opposition of the Bush Administration. The 13-term Arizona congressman had acquired a reputation as one of the most unassuming but powerful legislators in Congress.
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Surge of Non-English Speaking Immigrant Children Overwhelming Many Schools
An unprecedented influx of non-English speaking immigrants is overcrowding schools and creating enormous demand for English-as-a-second- language (ESL) teachers.

According to recently released data from the 2000 Census and the Department of Education the number of students with limited English skills doubled during the 1990s, to five million. Many of these new arrivals are showing up in rural areas and regions of the country such as the South and the Midwest that historically have not been areas of heavy immigration. For instance just since 1993, the number of such students more than tripled in states such as Alabama, Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Georgia, and South Carolina. In North Carolina the number more than quintupled.

The numbers are putting enormous strain on the budgets of many local school districts, overcrowding classrooms, and a scramble to find and hire bilingual teachers and staff. Often there is chaos in the classroom, with teachers untrained and unable to cope with the unexpected influx of non-English speaking children. Although many of the children are the children of legal immigrants, many are not. But a narrow five-to-four decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982, Plyler vs. Doe, ruled that public schools cannot turn away or charge tuition to children who are in the country illegally, and has been used as a pretext by school districts not to try and identify or count such children. With the Immigration and Naturalization Service conceding that anywhere from 8 to 11 million illegal aliens currently reside in the U.S., there is no question that this is a major factor in the explosion of non-English speaking children in schools.
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From Massachusetts:
     MA Legislators Adopt "Reform Bill" in      Desperate Effort to Derail Initiative
Fearful that a ballot initiative to end bilingual education in Massachusetts was likely to pass, state legislators hastily enacted a bilingual education “reform bill” that they claim would take care of the problem. The bill’s backers claim it gives local school districts substantial choice in the programs they use to teach English to limited English proficient (LEP) students.

However Lincoln Tamayo, co-chairman of English for the Children – Massachusetts, the group spearheading the campaign for the initiative said that the bill would do “absolutely nothing” to break the monopoly the bilingual education industry now exercises over teaching LEP students. He and other English for the Children leaders contend the bilingual education industry had thirty years to demonstrate that teaching children core subjects in their native language while teaching them English only a few hours a day would work, and failed to do the job. Now that the industry is entrenched in the schools, giving local districts more say in designing their English instruction programs would amount to little change and therefore offer little hope to tens of thousands of LEP students.

The bill included an extraordinary provision that gave state officials the power to rewrite the description of a yes or no vote on the anti-bilingual education initiative that had already qualified for the ballot. The move prompted one of the officials involved, Secretary of State William F. Galvin, to label it an “underhanded” tactic by the initiative’s opponents and accuse them of trying to rewrite the descriptions in a desperate attempt to get voters to vote against the initiative.

If adopted by voters, the English for the Children initiative would end bilingual education in favor of “immersion” style programs for teaching English that have proven successful in California since bilingual education programs were ended there.
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     MA Gubernatorial Candidate Endorses      Anti-Bilingual Ed Initiative
Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, has officially endorsed the citizen’s initiative that would end bilingual education in that state and replace it with traditional “immersion” style programs for teaching English to non-English speaking children. “The approach of English immersion is one that I support,” Romney said. “I would make English immersion the educational norm for all non-native English speakers.”

Romney’s endorsement of the initiative is unusual. The vast majority of political candidates and office holders in the only two states where similar initiatives previously have appeared on the ballot, California and Arizona, have either publicly opposed or shied away from endorsing them. But voters in both states approved the measures by landslide margins.
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From Colorado:
     Tests Illustrate Failure of Bilingual Ed.
Statewide tests of students in Colorado this spring that allowed students in bilingual education classes to be compared with those in immersion-style English as a second language (ESL) classes, showed ESL students scored above their bilingual education counterparts in academic subjects across the board.

Colorado critics of bilingual education said the test scores proved their case. Former Denver school board member Rita Montero who is chairing the campaign for a ballot initiative to abolish bilingual education in Colorado said, “This is clear evidence that bilingual education is a failure.”

About 38 percent of the state’s English language learning students are in bilingual education programs that teach students in their native language, while they are taught English only a few hours a day.

But spokesmen for Colorado’s bilingual education industry downplayed the scores saying a single year’s results were not enough to make a judgment. State Board of Education member Gully Stanford who is heading the campaign to defeat the initiative, said, “To generalize in this way, to rank teaching strategies based on this kind of generalization I think ignores the individual learning needs of every kid.”
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     CO Bilingual Ban Clears Petition Hurdle
On August 5th, English for the Children-Colorado, the committee sponsoring a ballot initiative to scrap the failed bilingual education program in favor of time-tested immersion style programs for teaching English, submitted petitions containing the signatures of some 140,000 registered voters to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. The number of signatures was considerably in excess of the 80,000 valid signatures needed to qualify—virtually assuring that the initiative would appear on the November ballot.

The number of signatures gathered was a personal triumph for California entrepreneur Ron Unz, the main financial backer of the initiative campaign. Unz and the other leaders had their backs against the wall when a series of court challenges by the bilingual education industry left the initiative’s backers with less than six weeks time to gather the necessary number of signatures. Normally, successful petition drives require five or six months to collect the necessary number of signatures.

Colorado now is almost certain to join Massachusetts as states with citizens’ initiatives banning bilingual education on the ballot this November.
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Miami-Dade Employee Fired for Not Speaking Spanish
A 16-year employee of the Miami-Dade County court system was abruptly fired by her supervisor for not being able to speak fluent Spanish after a campaign of harassment and discrimination because of her non-Hispanic background, according to news reports.

Zita Wilensky, had compiled an exemplary work record while working in various departments of the county court system over 14 years. But Wilensky was transferred into the court's domestic violence unit after her previous job was eliminated for budget reasons. In the office where she was assigned, she was the only non-Spanish speaking employee.

Spanish fluency was an advantage in her office because many of the calls that come into the domestic violence unit, were in Spanish. But Wilensky's job was primarily working with computers and she was only occasionally needed to screen incoming calls.

According to Wilensky, soon after she began working in her new assignment she was subjected to a pattern of discrimination and harassment due to her non-Hispanic background and inability to speak Spanish. Fellow employees commonly excluded her from office conversations that were conducted only in Spanish, and openly referred to her as "the Gringa" or "the Americana." In one of the cruelest incidents that took place at the height of the Anthrax scare, her supervisor asked her to sniff a suspicious looking envelope containing white powder in front of her fellow workers. When she refused she was ridiculed and told it was "a joke."

The final act came when her supervisor told her that she had 60 days to learn Spanish or lose her job - even though Spanish fluency was not part of her official job description. Thirty days later her supervisor placed a call to Wilensky, concealing her identity, screaming in Spanish, and pretending to be a victim of domestic violence. When Wilensky transferred the call to one of her Spanish-speaking co-workers, she was fired.

In response to the news reports, ProEnglish executive director K.C. McAlpin said, "I have spoken to Ms. Wilensky several times and seen her tell her story on TV. I believe she is telling the truth." He added that, "Not only does it appear that she was fired because she couldn't speak Spanish in a state in which English is the official language, but she appears to have been the victim of a campaign of intentional harassment simply because she was not Hispanic. Until and unless Zita Wilensky is reinstated or given an equivalent county job, I am asking all ProEnglish members to join a national boycott of the Miami-Dade County area to protest this injustice." McAlpin noted that Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade had refused requests for an independent commission to thoroughly investigate Wilensky's firing.

In the meantime, Zita Wilensky continues to pay a heavy price for the controversy over her dismissal. As the mother of two including a special-needs foster child she is adopting, she is now unemployed and urgently searching for work. But she has good reason to believe that negative references from her former employer continue to intimidate prospective employers, despite an untainted 16-year work record in the county court system.

ProEnglish members who want to express their opinions about Zita Wilensky's treatment directly to Miami Mayor Alex Penelas can write or e-mail him at the address below:

The Honorable Alex Penelas
Office of the Mayor
Stephen B. Clark Center
111 NW 1st Street, 29th Floor
Miami, FL 33128
(e-mail: mayor@miamidade.gov)

ProEnglish also will be happy to forward any mail to Zita Wilensky that is sent c/o ProEnglish at our regular office address: 1601 N. Kent Street, Suite 1601, Arlington, VA 22209.
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Green Bay Declares Official English
The county commissioners of Brown County Wisconsin where the city of Green Bay and the world famous Green Bay Packer professional football team are located, voted 17-8 to make English the county's official language. The July 17 vote came after a contentious debate that saw opponents of the measure hurl charges of racism and compare the commissioners' actions to Hitler's. Besides opposition of local ethnic pressure groups, the measure's backers had to overcome strong opposition from the Chamber of Commerce and lawyers' organizations like the ACLU in order to pass it.

Backers of the measure accused opponents of wanting to prevent immigrants from learning English to improve their skills and advance economically.

The final version of the resolution declares English the official language of the county and calls on the federal and state governments to make more funding available for teaching language.
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IN THE COURTS:
     Georgia Supreme Court Rejects Demand      for Multilingual Police Warnings
In a unanimous decision, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that police officers are not required to issue warnings in languages other than English when they encounter non-English speaking persons involved in apparent violations of the law. In a clear victory for common sense regarding language, the justices said that to require police officers to be equipped to issue warnings in every language would be "extremely problematic in a society as pluralistic and diverse as the United States."

The case triggering the Court's decision was brought by Omar Rodriguez, who had been arrested and convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Rodriguez had appealed his conviction arguing that because he did not speak English he was unable to understand the implied consent form which tells DUI suspects what their rights are regarding blood and urine testing.

Rodriguez's lawyer, Norma Cuadra, argued that her client should have been provided with an interpreter similar to that provided for the hearing-impaired. But the court pointed out that hearing impaired persons are physically unable to hear warnings that are read to them, whereas non-English speaking individuals have no physical disability that prevents them from learning English.

Reacting to the decision Cuadra said, "It's a sad day. This affects a whole lot of people in a growing population in Atlanta that doesn't speak English."
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      New Mexico Parents Charge Bilingual     Education is Discrimination
A group of Albuquerque parents are suing the city's school system charging that the system illegally segregates students by race when it automatically places Latino children in bilingual education classes. Oral arguments took place in May at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver in the case, Carbajal v. Albuquerque Public Schools.

Lawyers for the parents argued that the New Mexico Multilingual Multicultural Education Act unconstitutionally classifies students according to their national origin and then assigns those in bilingual education classes a substantially different and substandard curriculum. The parents further allege that the bilingual education program fails to teach English effectively and therefore violates the federal Equal Education Opportunities Act.

The lawsuit was brought with assistance from the Center for Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization concerned with civil rights.
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Editorial: The Big Lie in "English-Only"
Washington Post Writer's Group columnist Ruben Navarette referring to official English legislation says, "English-only laws are pointless and insulting." And the National Education Association (NEA) devotes four pages of its website to a denunciation of "English Only" laws as a bad idea.

Over and over in news articles and media interviews opponents of official English use the term "English-only" to describe official English laws. There is just one problem. The term is a lie. And it is time that we at ProEnglish and all other advocates for official English hold journalists, government officials, and others who use the term, accountable.

Here is why "English-only" is a lie. To date there are 29 states in the United States that have designated English an official language either in their state constitutions or by adopting a law. And none of those states, not a single one - - - prohibits the state government involved from using other languages for common sense, non-official reasons. Typically those reasons are to protect public health and public safety, promote tourism, teach foreign languages, administer justice, handle emergencies, and similar needs. In fact there is no law anywhere in the world that can accurately be described as "English-only" in the sense that it would make it illegal to use other languages under all circumstances.

So why do opponents of official English continue to use "English-only"? Because it is a loaded term that conveys exclusivity and an implied feeling of linguistic superiority. For that reason it is divisive and inflammatory and is especially upsetting to people whose native language is not English. Its misuse is intended to provoke a knee-jerk reaction and subtly demonize anyone who favors making English our official language, as well as those who simply want to protect its role as the common language of the United States.

So, if all this is true what does the term "official English" mean? It means that a government has decided that in order for its actions, laws, and business to be considered authoritative, they must be communicated in the English language. It means that there can be no disagreement about which language is the controlling one for discerning the meaning that government intends. And it means that there must be a compelling public interest for government to use any language other than English.

It also has a symbolic meaning, which is very important. It sends a message to all those who want to participate as citizens in this great republic, that there are responsibilities as well as benefits for being here. And one of those responsibilities is learning to speak the language of our country--English. There is no reason why our expectations for non-English speaking immigrants today should be anything less than our expectations for the generations of immigrants that preceded them.

So the next time you see a columnist or a reporter describe official English laws as "English-only," tell them they are wrong.
The Editor
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The Administration:
     Air Carriers Balk at Safety Rule
     Requiring Attendants to Know English
Following protests from the airline industry the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it was withdrawing a proposed rule requiring that “flight attendants understand sufficient English language to communicate, coordinate, and perform all safety related duties” aboard the nation’s aircraft. The FAA decision was published in the Federal Register May 2, following protests from the industry that the requirement would be economically burdensome and was not supported by specifically identified safety problems.

The need for the rule had been supported by a broad coalition of airline employee organizations including the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, and the Airline Division of the Teamsters Union. It also received support from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and two individuals who testified they had personally experienced problems communicating with flight attendants who had difficulty speaking English. The commentators urged the agency to take action before the lack of flight attendant English skills resulted in tragedy.

In shelving the proposed rule, the FAA announced that would attempt to address the English fluency issue later in the context of a broader regulation dealing with overall airline crewmember training.
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     Feds Order Hundreds of Cities and
     Counties to Begin Using Bilingual Ballots
Chinese in Chicago, Spanish in Denver, and Vietnamese in Houston; these cities were among hundreds of localities across the country that recently were told by the Justice Department that they have to start printing ballots in languages other than English based on results of the 2000 Census.

Despite the fact that English is a requirement for naturalization, the Voting Rights Act passed by Congress says that language minorities “that have suffered a history of exclusion from the political process,” are eligible for bilingual ballots. Local jurisdictions in which at least 5 percent of the voting-age population speaks one of the protected languages, or which have at least 10,000 voters from a protected language group (whichever is less), are required to print ballots in that language. The eligible languages include those spoken by persons who are “American Indian, Asian, Alaskan native, or Spanish heritage.”

Due to record levels of immigration in the 1990’s, the population of non-English speaking immigrants in the United States has skyrocketed meaning that many more jurisdictions now meet the minimum requirement for printing bilingual ballots. The Justice Department’s implementation of the law is running into opposition from officials in some localities who have to bear the cost of translating and printing the ballots in foreign languages. In some cases, they complain voting machines lack the necessary space for adding additional languages.

Bob Park, chairman of ProEnglish commented, “Sadly once again, we see the multicultural interests that want to divide Americans into separate linguistic/cultural groups and manipulate them for their political goals are using the federal government to advance their agenda. This country is not China, it is not Vietnam, it is not Mexico. It is the United States of America and our national language is English. We demand that our elected officials – beginning with President Bush – stop catering to special interests, and repeal these deeply offensive bilingual ballot requirements. ”