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We Win! Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Alabama's Official
English Law
By a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court ruled
in favor of Alabama in the case of Alexander v. Sandoval -- a
major victory for state official English laws across the country.
ProEnglish was actively involved in assisting Alabama's appeal
from the start. At the Supreme Court ProEnglish, together with
14 Congressmen, the English First Foundation, and the Center for
American Unity, joined in filing a legal brief that argued strongly
for upholding Alabama's official English law.
The case involved Martha Sandoval, a non-English speaking resident
alien from Mexico who sued Alabama with the help of the Southern
Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, for not making its state driver's
license exam available in her native language (Spanish).
Alabama had stopped giving its drivers' exams in foreign languages
after voters passed an initiative making English the state's official
language by a 9-1 margin in a 1990 voter referendum.
Although the Supreme Court decision turned
on the technical issue of whether or not individuals can sue government
agencies for unintentional discrimination, the ruling reversed
lower court decisions that sought to nullify Alabama's official
English law. Moreover, had it not been overturned, the Sandoval
case would have created a new entitlement to government services
in almost any number of foreign languages.
"For almost thirty years multicultural
advocates have tried to win in court what they have consistently
failed to win at the polls - rulings that overturn state official
English laws," said ProEnglish executive director K.C. McAlpin.
"This is a great victory for common sense, democracy, and the
rule of law." McAlpin called on Congress to settle the language
issue once and for all by passing a law declaring English the
official language of government in the United States. A
majority of twenty-six states have now declared English their
official language.
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Overturning
13166 May Depend on House of Representatives
H.R. 969, a bill that would revoke
Executive Order 13166, has attracted 52 cosponsors in the House
of Representatives, including 5 powerful committee chairmen. Introduced
by House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Bob Stump (R-AZ),
H.R. 969 also says that no federal funds can be used to create
or enforce any entitlement to services in a language other than
English.
President
Clinton issued 13166 last August. It requires all recipients of
federal funds, including state and local government offices and
private contractors, to begin providing oral interpreters and
written translations for people speaking foreign languages, or
risk prosecution for civil rights violations.
For
its legal authority, E.O. 13166 depended almost entirely on a
single federal court decision, Sandoval v. Hagan, that has since
been thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court (see story p.1).
But any
hope of revoking 13166 may depend on convincing the House to pass
H.R. 969. The reason: The Bush Administration seems reluctant
to revoke 13166 on its own, for fear of being painted as unfriendly
to non-English speaking immigrants by professional ethnic group
activists and the media. Congressional passage of H.R. 969, on
the other hand, would be a major victory in the battle to preserve
our common language.
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ProEnglish Tells Congress and the
Administration Why 13166 Must Be Repealed
The
House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative
Law held a hearing March 22, on the impact of recently issued
executive orders and what Congress should do to correct them.
ProEnglish was one of the groups that submitted testimony about
the urgent need to overturn Executive Order 13166 -- the order
issued by President Clinton that would force every recipient of
federal aid, including fire departments, libraries, local hospitals,
schools, and government offices to provide interpreter and translations
services in many foreign languages or face prosecution for civil
rights violations.
In
prepared testimony, ProEnglish executive director K.C. McAlpin
told Subcommittee Chairman Bob Barr (R-GA) and the other members
of the committee that E.O. 13166 was a blatantly illegitimate
use of executive power, and that the Congress should move expeditiously
to revoke it by passing H.R. 969 (see related story). The full
text of ProEnglish's testimony is available on ProEnglish's website
at www.proenglish.org.
Subsequently on May 1, McAlpin
and ProEnglish outside legal counsel Barnaby Zall met with the
White House Domestic Policy staff to urge the Bush Administration
to revoke E.O. 13166 without waiting for Congress to act.
Four Compelling Reasons Why Executive Order 13166 Should
Be Repealed:
1. The order's radical
reinterpretation of civil rights law was based almost entirely
on a federal court decision, Alexander v. Sandoval that was recently
overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (see story p.1).
2. The
order is falsely entitled "Improving Access to Services" for non-English
speaking persons when, in fact, it creates a new civil right to
demand government services in virtually any of the over 300 languages
spoken in the U.S. -- certain to impose billions of dollars in
new costs on American taxpayers and result in a new wave of lawsuits
claiming civil rights violations.
3. The order wrongly equates "national
origin discrimination" under the 1964 civil rights law with the
failure to provide services in languages other than English -
a radical new definition of discrimination that was never debated
or approved by Congress.
4. The order is destructive of
national unity and contrary to the will of a vast majority of
the American people who want English to be the official language
of the United States.
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President Bush Begins Giving Weekly Radio Address
in Spanish
In an apparent
effort to gain favor with multicultural groups and non-English
speaking Hispanic immigrants, President Bush began giving his
weekly presidential radio address in Spanish as well as English.
The President's first such address in Spanish coincided with "Cinco
de Mayo" (May 5th), a Mexican national holiday. However, the White
House announced that giving the weekly address in both English
and Spanish would be standard procedure from now on. The Democrats
quickly announced they would follow suit.
ProEnglish chairman, Bob Park
commented, "We are deeply saddened that the President has chosen
to take this course. We certainly don't object to the president
displaying his command of Spanish and encouraging Americans to
learn foreign languages by his example. In fact, in today's world
we encourage it," Park said. "But we think it is a serious mistake
to abandon our nation's historic unity in the English language,
and by adopting this policy, that is the direction he is taking
us," Park added.
Park noted that
by giving the weekly address in Spanish, the president was ignoring
all other foreign languages spoken in the U.S., and he urged the
president to listen to the American people who are overwhelmingly
opposed to bilingual government.
ProEnglish members can contact
President Bush by writing: The Honorable George W. Bush, The White
House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20500, or
by calling (202) 456-1414.
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Dispatches from the Bilingual Ed Battlefront
GAO Report Reveals the Truth
Behind the Office of Civil Rights Denial that it Promotes Bilingual
Education
Despite a 30-year record
of failure, bilingual education - a euphemism for teaching non-English
speaking students in their native language instead of English
- continues to benefit from its aggressive promotion by the Office
of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education.
The facts were revealed
in a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) Report issued this February
that showed that in nearly one out of five cases reviewed by GAO,
the OCR attempted to pressure school districts to use bilingual
education for teaching non-English speaking students. In OCR's
Region 11 in northern California, the GAO found that the Department
of Education bureaucrats tried to influence school districts in
over a third of the cases examined.
The GAO report contradicts
former OCR Assistant Secretary Norma Cantu, who testified to the
U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 that the OCR "does not enforce
any . . . policy that encourages the use of bilingual education
programs as opposed to other educational approaches to meet the
needs of [non English-speaking] students."
Oregon Legislator Sponsors
Bill to End State's Bilingual Education Program
Oregon State Senator Charles
Starr (R-Hillsboro), citing the undeniable academic results achieved
by California school children in the wake of the state's decision
to end bilingual there, has introduced Bill 919 to end bilingual
education in Oregon. Starr is chairman of the State's Senate Education
Committee. State Rep. Cliff Zauner (R-Woodburn) has introduced
a companion bill in the House.
But the measure drew
the immediate and well-organized opposition of the state's bilingual
education industry, anxious to protect higher bilingual education
salaries and tens of millions of dollars in educational subsidies,
perks, and administrative funding. Opposition was led by the Oregon
legislature's first Hispanic member, State Senator Susan Castillo
(D-Eugene), who said she was "totally opposed" to the legislation
at an education committee hearing on the bill. Sen. Starr countered
that the special English immersion classes introduced in California
have proven so popular that a majority of the state's Hispanic
population now favors them.
ProEnglish supporters
in Oregon who wish to contact their state legislators can write
to them at: 900 Court Street NE, Salem, OR 97301, or by accessing
the state legislature website: at www.leg.state.or.us.
The Heart of the Matter
"Bilingual education has
become a multibillion-dollar business of bureaucrats and militant
separatists . . . Any major change in education is wrapped up
in money, power and control. Now we have a huge bureaucracy of
administrators, bilingual psychologists and textbook publishers
producing books in Spanish. Whether anyone wants to admit it or
not, there's a huge investment in keeping [bilingual education]
going. Unfortunately, the result is a poorer education for about
1,200 children in Rhode Island and the waste of many dollars that
could be better spent elsewhere."
-- from an article
in the Providence Journal-Bulletin, April 1, 2001 by
Rhode Island Democratic State Representative Myrna C. George
Albany NY Data Shows Drop-Out
Rate for Limited English Proficient Students Exceeds 30 Percent
Recent data from Albany New
York city schools shows that 31 percent of Limited English Proficient
(LEP) students are dropping out of school, up sharply from 17
percent in 1998.
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Oakland California Adopts "Bilingual
Spanish/Chinese Only" Hiring Policy
-- No English Speakers Need Apply
The large scale immigration of non-English
speaking immigrants into many American cities documented by the
2000 Census, is increasingly leading politicians to pander to
the language demands of the new arrivals, instead of insisting
they learn English.
On
May 8th, the Oakland, California City Council adopted an ordinance
requiring all new hires for city jobs that have "public contact"
to be bilingual in either Chinese or Spanish, in addition to English.
According to the new policy, native-born citizens of Oakland who
speak only English, including most of the city's large African-American
population, will not qualify. Press reports indicated that other
cities might try to follow Oakland's lead.
Oakland businessman and ProEnglish board member Leo Sorensen, an
immigrant himself, attended the city council meeting and denounced
the policy as "turning America's historic policy of assimilating
new immigrants upside down." He added "This is just absolutely
wrong. For generations, immigrants have learned English as the
first and most essential step in assimilating into mainstream
life in this fabulous country. Why are our political leaders abandoning
the formula that has made this the most successful country in
the world?"
Sorensen said ProEnglish regards the Oakland ordinance as patently
discriminatory toward English speaking Americans. He pointed out
that the policy was an insult to new immigrants because it suggests
that, unlike past generations of American immigrants, the new
immigrants either cannot, or will not learn the language of their
adopted country. Sorensen said ProEnglish would examine all possible
avenues for overturning the new law, including possible legal
action.
Californians
and others who want to help can contact Mr. Sorensen by writing
him c/o ProEnglish.
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Bus
Driver's Inability to Read English May Have Caused Death of Four
A Chinese immigrant
bus driver's inability to understand English may have been the
chief cause of a tragic accident that cost the lives of four Massachusetts
middle school students this April. The students were killed when
the driver of charter bus they were riding in got confused and
took a wrong exit while traveling too fast near St. John, New
Brunswick, Canada.
The driver's wife told a newspaper
that her husband could not speak English and the Canadian police
had to resort to using a Chinese language interpreter to question
the driver after the accident. The father of one of the victims
questioned how the driver could have passed a New York state exam
and obtained his commercial driver's license in 1993 without speaking
English well.
Such language-related highway
tragedies could become far more common in the U.S. soon thanks
to Executive Order 13166. U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
guidelines for implementing 13166 take direct aim at states that
might be tempted to use public safety as a reason for not giving
driver's exams in a foreign language:
" Assertions of safety justifications
would generally not be accepted unless accompanied by statistical
and/or scientific casualty studies showing a positive correlation
between limited English proficiency and crash/injury rates substantially
higher than would be expected due to chance." (Fed. Reg.: Jan.
22, 2001, Vol. 66, No. 14, 6733-6747)
Of course, thanks to political sensitivities, neither DOT nor
any other government agency is likely to conduct the kind of English
proficiency tests of people involved in traffic accidents that
might prove such a "positive correlation." So the likelihood of
many more innocents being killed on our highways unfortunately
is very real.
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Victory in Utah! Judge Rules Utah Official
English Law is Constitutional
ProEnglish and the official
English movement scored a major court victory when a Utah district
judge ruled against an ACLU suit challenging the constitutionality
of Utah's official English law. The law had been adopted in a
statewide voter initiative that passed by a 2-1 margin last fall.
ProEnglish attorneys played a critical role convincing Judge Ronald
H. Nehring to uphold the law by filing a legal brief that aggressively
defended the law's constitutionality.
ProEnglish's intervention
turned out to be critical when the Utah Attorney General's office
mounted a very weak defense of the measure in a transparent effort
to get the law killed. ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park commented,
"The judge's ruling that the law was constitutional across the
board was a welcome rebuke to the [Utah] Attorney General's office
who had publicly sided with the plaintiffs in saying that a key
provision of the law should be overturned." Park added, "What
ever happened to state officials' duty to vigorously defend duly
constituted state laws, including laws with which they may personally
disagree?"
The ACLU is appealing Judge Nehring's decision to the Utah Supreme
Court. ProEnglish plans to continue its intervention by filing
an additional friend-of-the-court brief with the high court. Utah
is the 26th state to have adopted English as its official language.
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English and the National Interest
"Cultural and religious diversity does not pose
a threat to the national interest as long as public policies ensure
civic unity. Such policies should help newcomers learn to speak,
read, and write English effectively."
-- Barbara Jordan, former
U.S. Representative and Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration
Reform, testifying to Congress on June 28, 1995.
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Texas State Senator Conducts Official
State Meeting in Spanish
Declaring "Estamos unidos hacia
un destino comun," (translation: "We are united toward a common
goal"), Texas State Senator David Sibley (R-Waco) took a big step
toward converting the Lone Star State into a linguistically divided
society by conducting an official meeting of his Senate Business
and Commerce Committee meeting entirely in Spanish. The well-publicized
fifteen-minute meeting was conducted under the glare of TV camera
lights, and showcased a speech given in Spanish by Sibley, with
English subtitles shown on television screens.
Commenting ProEnglish
chairman Bob Park said, "By conducting an official legislative
meeting entirely in Spanish, Sibley has gone far beyond the demands
of the most radical multiculturalists. Imagine the reaction in
Mexico if a state government official were to conduct an official
meeting entirely in English."
Texans, surveying news reports
of violent conflicts between members of linguistically and culturally
divided countries from around the world, might be tempted to wonder
about the wisdom of the "common goal" politicians like Sibley
say they are pursuing. But Sibley himself brushed aside criticism
of his Spanish-only committee meeting saying "We had one person
that wrote us a real hot letter. We wrote them a nice letter back
and I ended it by saying Adios."
ProEnglish supporters in Texas
who would like to communicate with State Senator Sibley can write
him at: The Honorable David Sibley, 801 Austin Avenue, Suite 1020,
Waco, Texas 76701.
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Professional Ethnic
Group Lobbyists Block Official English Bill in Iowa
A well-organized
outpouring of multicultural advocates and ethnic group representatives
at a rally and public hearing on an official English bill after
it passed the Iowa State Senate was enough to intimidate Republican
leaders, and the legislation died for lack of action by the House.
At a rally attended by
a hundred protestors at the state capitol, Amnesty International
spokesman Ivan Webber likened the language someone speaks to their
race or ethnicity. "No one would propose that we have a single,
official ethnicity," he declared. "But in fact, official English
does create an official ethnicity. It makes speakers of English
official and better than other people," he said.
Although
a recent poll by the Des Moines Register showed an overwhelming
81 percent of Iowans favored declaring English the official language,
the bill's opponents far outnumbered supporters at the public
hearing. Apparently, the pressure tactics worked. Republican majority
leaders in the House decided not to allow the bill to come up
for a vote and the deadline for action in this year's legislative
session lapsed.
Even before the House leadership
failed to act on the Senate-passed bill, House Speaker Brent Siegrest
(R-Council Bluffs) announced he was wavering, saying, "It's not
my favorite bill." ProEnglish supporters in Iowa can contact their
State Representatives by writing them c/o State House of Representatives,
Des Moines, IA 50319.
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Doctor
Protests Lead Health & Human Services to Review Executive
Order 13166
Labeling it another "unfunded
mandate," the American Medical Association (AMA) released a letter
dated February 13th that it sent to Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson urging him to immediately rescind the
department's implementation of Executive Order 13166.
The letter pointed out
that E.O. 13166 would require physicians to hire clinically trained
interpreters at their own expense and noted, "the cost of retaining
an interpreter far exceeds the compensation paid by Medicaid for
an office visit … and is likely ultimately to discourage physicians
from treating any Medicaid patients, thus further exacerbating
problems with patient access to needed physician services."
The AMA was joined by
all 50 state medical societies and many other groups representing
physicians and health care professionals who protested the huge
cost and Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this order that requires
any recipient of federal aid to provide foreign language interpreters
and translators on demand, or face prosecution for civil rights
violations. The groups cite one example in which a doctor spent
$237 for an interpreter and was paid just $38 for the visit.
The physicians
are discovering that the allocation of scarce resources to serve
the real needs of people is of scant concern to multicultural
zealots who want to transform American society regardless of cost,
or the harm they do to people in the process.
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