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No excuses: It's time
for Congress to act
Focus shifts to committees to pass official
English bills
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Almost 1/3 of the entire U.S. House
of Representatives - 137 congressmen including Republicans and
Democrats - have co-sponsored H.R. 997, a bill by Rep. Steve
King (R-IA) that makes English the official language of the
United States. With that huge demonstration of bipartisan support,
pressure is mounting on the House leadership and the chairmen
of the two committees with jurisdiction over the bill to take
it up in committee so the legislation can come to the floor
of the House for a vote.
"Now that we have demonstrated
the enormous bipartisan support that exists for H.R. 997, the
House leadership has a duty and responsibility to start moving
this bill in committee," said Bob Park, ProEnglish Chairman.
"I call on House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman
John Boehner (R-OH) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James
Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to schedule hearings on the bill and report
it out of their respective committees so it can come to the
floor for a vote." House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman
Boehner is a co-sponsor of H.R. 997.
ProEnglish sent its supporters
an urgent letter-in-a-box early this fall with postcards pre-addressed
to Chairman Boehner and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert,
urging these key congressional leaders to schedule hearings
and a vote on H.R. 997. |
And ProEnglish has delivered tens
of thousands of petitions and postcards sent in by ProEnglish
supporters across the nation to Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert's office on Capitol Hill. They urge him to take immediate
action to pass the official English legislation now pending
in Congress.
Park added: "We are meeting with
the committee staffs and using every channel we have to convince
the House leadership to take up this urgently needed legislation,
which enjoys the overwhelming 79 percent support of all voters
according to the most recent national poll."
To find out if your Representative
is a co-sponsor, check the list of HR 997 co-sponsors on page
3. People who use the Internet also can visit ProEnglish's website:
www.proenglish.org and use the ProEnglish Fax Center to send
a fax message (at no cost to the sender), to Committee Chairmen
Boehner and Sensenbrenner, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
asking them to take up the bill.
"The support of our members is
critical at this important juncture in our campaign to educate
members of Congress," said Ben Piper, ProEnglish director of
government relations. "It's not enough for us to tell House
leaders why official English is vital to our country's well-being.
They need to hear it from citizens all across our nation."
(Click here for current list of sponsors.)
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ProEnglish
advisory board adds two new members
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Two more distinguished Americans joined ProEnglish's national
board of advisors this summer, raising its membership to 12.
Glynn Custred is a professor of anthropology at California State
University, Hayward. Professor Custred has written extensively
on language and is an expert witness in ProEnglish's current
lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Health & Human Service's
rules implementing Executive Order 13166. He is also a co-author
of Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative,
adopted overwhelmingly by California voters in 1996.
Robert Vasquez is a county commissioner
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community
leader in Canyon County, Idaho. The grandson of Mexican immigrants,
Commissioner Vasquez is a twice-wounded U.S. Army veteran of
the Vietnam War. He is the author of numerous local newspaper
columns including some that argue strongly for official English.
ProEnglish National Board of Advisors
Chair Gerda Bikales said, "ProEnglish is honored to have these
two outstanding Americans join the other distinguished members
of our national board of advisors. Their decision and commitment
reflects the growing support for official English throughout
our nation. We are delighted to have them on board."
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ProEnglish
to fight bilingual ballot renewal
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Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee, announced his committee would hold hearings this
fall on whether Congress should renew the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 (VRA), including its provisions for bilingual ballots.
The VRA was originally intended to remove barriers to voter
registration in states and counties with a history of denying
black Americans their right to vote.
The bilingual ballot provisions
were added as an amendment when the law was renewed ten years
later - in 1975. At the time, ethnic special interest groups
argued that ballots in English discriminated against voters
who they claimed had been unfairly excluded from the electoral
process because of "unequal educational opportunities." Comparisons
were made between ballots in English and literacy tests once
used to keep blacks from voting in the South.
ProEnglish Board Chairman Bob
Park rejected the literacy test comparison. "The original purpose
of the Voting Rights Act was to ensure the right of citizens
to vote," Park said. "English ballots are not a barrier to voting
for U.S. citizens, since applicants for naturalization must
demonstrate their ability to read and understand English in
order to become citizens."
He continued, "ProEnglish believes
bilingual ballots are a direct threat to the linguistic and
political unity of the United States. |
Their
existence undermines the integrity of the naturalization process
by removing a major incentive for immigrants to learn English.
And bilingual ballots facilitate illegal voting by non-citizens
and make it easier to commit election fraud, which strikes at
the heart of our democracy."
The Bush Administration has signaled
its support for renewing the VRA's bilingual ballot provisions.
In August, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales touted the
Administration's record of filing more lawsuits in the last
four years to enforce the bilingual ballot provisions than in
the previous 26-year history of the Act.
"I think many in Congress want
to reauthorize the Act and get it off the table as a political
issue as soon as possible," said Ben Piper, director of government
relations for ProEnglish. "But ProEnglish is going to do everything
we can to defeat Section 203 (the bilingual ballot provision)
in the process."
"The most helpful thing people
can do now is to contact their congressional representatives
and communicate their views on renewing the Act's bilingual
ballot requirements," he added.
People can contact their congressmen
by calling the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. They can
also visit ProEnglish's website (www.proenglish.org) to identify
their members of Congress and find more information on bilingual
ballots. |
In the courts:
Outside
groups join battle over E.O.13166 appeal |
Several groups filed legal briefs for and against ProEnglish's
appeal of a court decision dismissing its lawsuit against the
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) over Executive
Order 13166 (E.O. 13166).
E.O. 13166 requires recipients
of federal funds to provide free translation services for their
non-English speaking clients. State and local governments as
well as doctors that participate in Medicare, face civil rights
prosecution and loss of federal funds if they refuse.
Last year ProEnglish, the Association
of American Physicians and Surgeons, and several individual
physicians filed suit in federal court to challenge the legality
of HHS rules implementing E.O. 13166. But a judge dismissed
the suit saying that none of the plaintiffs had suffered sufficient
injury to have the standing to sue. Represented by the Pacific
Legal Foundation, ProEnglish and its co-plaintiffs are appealing
that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
An array of ethnic interest groups
led by the National Asian Pacific Legal Consortium (NAPLC) recently
entered the case and filed a brief opposing ProEnglish and its
co-plaintiffs' claim to standing. Surprisingly the list of groups
included the 19,000-member American College of Physicians (ACP),
an organization dedicated to defending doctors' interests. The
move appears to put the ACP at odds with the majority of the
medical profession. For example the 300,000-member American
Medical Association (AMA) and the medical societies of all fifty
states strongly opposed E.O. 13166. The medical organizations
criticized E.O. 13166 as one more un-funded federal mandate
that would increase the cost of medical care and discourage
doctors from treating non-English speaking patients. After President
Bush
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took
office the AMA wrote HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and urged
him to immediately rescind the department's E.O.13166 policy
guidance.
In a news release the ACP defended its decision by saying it
had agreed to join the opposing brief because it supported a
non-English speaking patient's right to "quality health care."
This appears to include the patient's right to fluent, medically
competent translation services. But the ACP said that instead
of being billed to physicians, the cost of providing these translation
services should be a "societal one."
The ACP action drew a sharp rebuttal
from Clifford Colwell, M.D., a ProEnglish National Advisory
Board member and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking
to overturn the HHS rules: "The ACP's decision to oppose our
appeal is directly contrary to the interests of the doctors
and patients it claims to serve. The idea that taxpayers instead
of physicians should be required to pay the cost of such translation
services is totally unrealistic in the face of the already impossible
tax burden of the Iraq war effort and rebuilding after our own
natural disasters. It also dodges the question of whether such
an entitlement is right in the first place. The ACP is also
ignoring the fact that E.O. 13166 shifts liability for translation
errors and omissions to the physician, whomever pays the bill.
Without question that is going to add to the cost of physician's
malpractice insurance and be another incentive for malpractice
lawyers."
Two other national organizations
supported ProEnglish's appeal. The Southeastern Legal Foundation
in Atlanta Georgia, and the Center for Equal Opportunity in
Sterling Virginia, jointly filed a brief arguing for ProEnglish's
claim to legal standing. Due to a heavy backlog of cases, a
hearing on the appeal is probably months away.
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Court
sets date for Alabama driver's license case arguments
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The Alabama court handling the lawsuit
by five members of ProEnglish will hear arguments in the case
Nov. 21. The lawsuit asks the court to order Governor Bob Riley
to enforce the state constitution's official English amendment
and stop giving driver's license exams in foreign languages.
After
voters approved the official English amendment by a 9-1 margin
in a 1990 referendum, Alabama stopped giving driver's license
exams in languages other than English. The policy remained in
effect for seven years until a Spanish-speaking immigrant named
Martha Sandoval sued charging that it violated the 1964 Civil
Rights Act's ban on 'national origin' discrimination. When a
federal judge ruled for Sandoval, the state went back to giving
the exam in multiple languages.
Alabama appealed the decision
that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the case
was before the Court, Alabama Governor Bob Riley, then
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a
U.S. Representative, and thirteen other
members of Congress officially signed on to a ProEnglish Supreme
Court brief. The brief pointed out that Alabama's policy did
not violate federal civil rights law because a person's language
was not the same as their national origin and Congress never
intended otherwise.
Alabama won its appeal when the Supreme
Court ruled in 2001 that Sandoval did have the standing to challenge
the state's policy. Alabama's Attorney General at the time,
Bill Pryor, said the decision gave Alabama the right to have
the language policy it wanted for driver's license exams.
But when Riley was elected governor in
2002, he did an about face and refused to reinstate the English
language policy for driver's license exams. After Riley ignored
ProEnglish's repeated request to reinstate the policy, five
ProEnglish members in Alabama decided to take the governor to
court. |
Dallas
schools forcing principals to learn Spanish
Trustees
of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) adopted a policy
at the end of August that will force many of their school principals
to learn Spanish. The controversial "Spanish for Principals"
program, approved by a narrow 5-4 vote, applies to schools where
limited English proficient students (LEP) make up at least half
of the students enrolled. All three African-American trustees
voted against the policy while all three Hispanic trustees voted
for it in what newspapers described as a racially charged trustees'
meeting. The proposal was seen as the brainchild of the District's
Hispanic school superintendent, Michael Hinojosa.
"The trustees who voted for this
rule have their priorities upside down," said K.C. McAlpin,
the executive director of ProEnglish. "If Dallas schools are
failing their responsibility to teach school children to speak
English because they continue segregating them in bilingual
classrooms, the school board should address that failure rather
than accommodate it by forcing school administrators to learn
the students' language," he added.
DISD Trustee Joel May first introduced
the resolution in May justifying it as a "customer friendly"
way to improve communication between non-English speaking parents
and their childrens' principals.
The draft 3-year plan requires
principals to attend a weekly three-hour class for ten weeks
during the fall and spring semesters, and give up four weeks
of their summer break to attend all day classes. Two of the
four weeks have to be spent attending class in Mexico.
"If the DISD wants to help Spanish
speaking parents bridge the language divide, it should use its
school facilities and resources to make English as a second
language classes widely available to them," McAlpin continued.
"That would help these parents fend for themselves, boost their
skills and economic prospects, and strengthen our country as
a whole. It's a win-win proposition, and the DISD trustees who
voted for the mandatory Spanish policy should be ashamed they
chose a coercive and divisive approach instead." McAlpin said
ProEnglish is considering helping Dallas school principals who
want to challenge the policy. |
Denver
Library replacing English books with Spanish
In a story that provoked outrage
from many area residents, it was revealed this summer that
the Denver public library system was replacing English language
reading materials with Spanish language versions at seven
branch libraries located in heavily immigrant areas of the
city. Public fury deepened after local activists revealed
that the Spanish language materials included thousands of
so-called fotonovelas, comic book-like materials depicting
violence against women, rape, beatings, stabbings, and murder.
Head librarian Rick Ashton defended
the library's decision saying, "It is one of our responsibilities
and traditions to serve as a resource for immigrants in their
efforts to become members of our local community." Critics
accused the system of abandoning its duty to promote the acquisition
of English reading skills by new immigrants in favor of promoting
a politically correct model of linguistic segregation. And
they accused the library of conducting an all-out drive to
boost its circulation figures in the face of budget cut.
"This is America. Our language
is English. It's important that our public institutions adhere
to a single language," said Fred Elbel, president of
the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. Some commentators
pointed out that Article II Section 30 of Colorado's constitution
declares English the state's official language and wondered
how a public institution funded by taxpayers could thumb its
nose at the constitution. Others wondered why Spanish was
singled out for special consideration among the hundreds of
foreign languages now spoken in Denver's immigrant community.
Following a public outcry the
Denver library announced that it had reviewed and decided
to cancel four of its fourteen subscriptions to Spanish-language
fotonovelas due to their adult content. But there was no indication
it planned to change its policy of removing English reading
materials from local libraries to make room for books and
publications in Spanish..
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EEOC
sues another small business for English-on-the-job
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In September The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
filed a federal lawsuit against another small business charging
it with discrimination for enforcing an English-on-the-job rule.
This time the EEOC targeted a Rochester NY company named Spring
Sheet Metal that does commercial roofing and sheet metal construction
work. Forty percent of the company's 32-man unionized workforce
are minorities.
The EEOC charged that the privately
owned company's decision two years ago to terminate a Cuban-born
roofing apprentice for continuing to speak Spanish on the job
after being warned not to
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several
times, was "egregious discrimination." A company official denied
the EEOC allegations saying the apprentice worker had been warned
five times adding that the policy was a safety issue.
The suit seeks compensation for
back pay as well as $50,000 in monetary damages for the employee.
ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park said,
"This is another example of how the EEOC is continuing to abuse
its power by bullying and harassing small businesses that have
perfectly legal English language workplace policies. We hope
the owners decide to fight this rogue federal agency." Park
added, "If they do, ProEnglish is ready to help them."
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Ohio
civil rights agency attacks neighborhood bar for English
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In the latest display of multiculturalism's intolerance for
Americans' right to free speech, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission
charged the owner of a neighborhood bar in Mason, Ohio with
engaging in "discriminatory practices," for posting a sign in
the bar's window that read "For Service Speak English."
The owner of the Pleasure Inn
tavern, Tom Ullum, defended his sign saying, "the sign means
exactly what it says …None of the [bar's] employees speak any
language other than English and, therefore, would be unable
to communicate with any patrons who are not [fluent] in the
English language." He said his establishment does not refuse
to serve or admit anyone based on sex, color, race, or national
origin, in accordance with Ohio's civil rights law.
But the Commission found that
Ullum suffered from delusions about free speech and the kind
of opinions that -- according to the Commission -- would surely
have landed any number of U.S. presidents (as well as the author
of this newsletter) in jail. The Commission's letter of determination
read, "Mr. Ullum …believes he has the right to post in his window
whatever he pleases. He insists that he |
does
not discriminate against anyone. However, he does believe
that immigrants who live in this country should learn to speak
English." ProEnglish executive director K.C.
McAlpin blasted the action: "Once again, multicultural government
bureaucrats are seeking to twist the plain meaning of "national
origin" to equate it with the language someone chooses to
speak in order to concoct a deliberately trumped up violation
of civil rights law." In a disgraceful editorial entitled
'Speak English -- a sign of bigotry,' The Cincinatti Enquirer
newspaper wrote, "Ullum has a right to his opinion," but concluded
that Ullum had no right to express his opinion by posting
a sign on his property that contradicted The Enquirer's view."
McAlpin said, "The members and
staff of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission need a remedial
course on the American Constitution and the First Amendment.
Even though the Commission pretends to champion 'diversity,'
it's clear by their actions they want to be multicultural
thought police and prosecute anyone who thinks differently
than they do." McAlpin said that ProEnglish would help Ullum
defend himself against the charges.
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Around
the World:
Language
rift leads to bloody riots in Belgium |
The bitter language division between
the French-speaking and Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium erupted
into bloody riots in which demonstrators clashed with police
in the streets of Brussels last May. The disturbances brought
the government near collapse and spurred commentators to speculate
that the country was "finished" as a unified nation.
Flemish, spoken by the majority,
is closely related to Dutch and has few words in common with
French. The immediate cause of the riots centered |
on
whether or not the French-speaking minority living in majority
Flemish-speaking districts had the right to elect French-speaking
representatives. The riots broke out when government negotiators
failed to reach a compromise acceptable to representatives of
the two language groups.
The linguistic division in Belgian
society is pervasive and has long plagued the nation. Hospitals,
schools, theatres, and political parties are either French speaking
or Flemish speaking and almost all institutions are split along
linguistic lines. |
| Canadian
judge tosses traffic tickets over language |
A judge in Manitoba, Canada, threw
out speeding tickets against six drivers because some information
on the tickets was written only in English.
The city of Winnipeg's charter
complies with Canada's official language laws by requiring all
official documents to be written in both English and French.
But certain information about the traffic violations was recorded
only in English, including the date, the vehicle make, and the
street intersection. |
Only four percent of Manitoba's population speaks French as
a first language. But the percentage is higher in provincial
capitol of Winnipeg. The city argued that the language of the
tickets merely reflected the information that the police were
given by Manitoba Public Insurance and the province's driver
and vehicle licensing department. But the judge ruled that the
traffic tickets gave French a "secondary status" and dismissed
them. |
