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Oklahoma
Legislator Continues Fight for Official English
Oklahoma State Representative
Ron Kirby (R-Lawton) has introduced legislation, House Bill
1020 to make English the state's official language.
Kirby said that H.B. 1020
represents the efforts of people from diverse ethnic, cultural
and linguistic backgrounds who "continue to benefit from
this rich diversity….The common thread binding individuals
of differing backgrounds," has been the English language.
The bill represents a continuation
of the push for official English in Oklahoma. In 2002 a
qualified citizens initiative to put the issue on the ballot
was scuttled by the Oklahoma State Supreme Court, which
in a highly political move, ruled that the measure was so
unconstitutional that voters should not even have the chance
to vote for it.
Normally under the U.S. system
of divided powers courts wait for a laws to be enacted by
legislatures or adopted by voters before ruling on their
constitutional compliance. But the state's political establishment
was so fearful of the voters' will on official English that
a pretext was invented to suppress it.
Minnesota
Bill to Require Driver's License Exams in English Fails
The Republican minority leader
in the Minnesota State Senate, Senator Dick Day, introduced
a bill, S.F. 704, this spring requiring that state drivers'
license exams be given in English without the aid of an
interpreter. But his common sense measure to promote the
safety of Minnesota's driving public and reduce cheating
on drivers' license exams, was blocked by the Senate's Democratic
leadership, and failed to emerge from committee in time
to be considered this year.
Maine
to Provide Driving Manual in Spanish
Despite the fact that Maine's
immigrant population is only 2%, Maine Secretary of State
Dan Gwadosky announced plans to translate the State's driving
manual into Spanish. Road safety has become an issue in
Maine since the worst traffic accident in the state's history
killed 14 migrant workers from Honduras and Guatemala last
September.
The League of United Latin
American Citizens (LULAC) says that a Spanish language manual
should be only the first step. LULAC is pushing for the
driver's license test to be offered in Spanish as well.
Immigrant's rights groups like LULAC claim that manuals
and testing in Spanish are needed for highway "safety."
But critics point out that
fluency in English is far more important if "safety" is
the objective. People who lack a command of English cannot
read highway-warning signs, read highway directions, or
communicate with police and emergency personnel.
Although Gwadosky said Maine
was willing to translate the manual, he refused to make
drivers' license exams available in Spanish. Pointing out
that the driver in last year's crash had a license and that
speeding was the cause of the accident, Gwadosky said that
language could not be considered a factor in the crash.
As for testing in Spanish,
he pointed out that since Maine does only 36,000 tests a
year, "there really isn't a big need. Maine is not California."
Conversion
to Immersion Translates to Huge Gains for CA Students
California education officials
announced in March that the number of students scoring at
the highest fluency levels nearly tripled since the state's
English Language Development Test was first introduced two
years ago. "Significant progress toward English proficiency
is being made at every grade level," boasted California
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.
The results confirmed the
astounding success of the state's switch from bilingual
education to English immersion style teaching methods mandated
by Proposition 227 in 1998. Since it took most school districts
one to two years to change their teaching methods, the two-year
period of comparative test scores closely tracks the impact
of the conversion to English immersion classrooms.
The struggle to pass the controversial
citizens initiative was inspired by Hispanic immigrant parents,
who boycotted a local school because they were fed up with
the failure of bilingual education programs to teach their
children English. That attracted the financial backing of
California entrepreneur Ron Unz, and Proposition 227 passed
by a margin of 61 percent.
English & The American Dream
"I was 2 when I came to
the U.S., and I remember learning English by watching
'Sesame Street' and 'The Electric Company.' Thank God
that I learned English because instead of becoming an
Ivy League university graduate, I might have been a
janitor at an Ivy League school whose name I could not
even spell."
--- from a letter to the editor by Juan E. Alva, published
in the Los Angeles Times Jan. 13, 2003. |
Immigrants Say "Learn
English"
By 65 percent to 31 percent,
more than a two to one margin, immigrants think that the
U.S. should expect new immigrants to learn English, America's
common language. Hispanic immigrants agreed by a slightly
lower margin of 61 percent. Even greater numbers of immigrants
- 73 percent -- think that schools should teach English
as quickly as possible, and by 63 percent to 32 percent,
they favor English immersion classrooms instead of bilingual
education in which students are taught primarily in their
native language.
ProEnglish executive director
KC McAlpin commented, "The findings of the Public Agenda
poll are consistent with other polls that show immigrants
are overwhelmingly in favor of preserving English as the
common language of the United States. It begs the question
of exactly who politicians and bureaucrats are pandering
to, in their mad rush to convert the United States into
a Tower-of-Babel society," he added.
In another significant finding,
the same poll found that by 31 percent to 13 percent, immigrants
were more likely to think that U.S. borders were "too open"
than "too closed."
Public Agenda, a non-partisan
research organization, conducted the national poll of 1,002
foreign-born adults for the Carnegie Corporation of New
York last fall. The survey has a +/- 3 percent margin of
error.
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DISPATCHES
FROM
THE BILINGUAL ED. BATTLEFRONT
More from Colorado:
To
follow up on an article in the February 2003 ProEnglish
Advocate ("Colorado Bilingual Ed Ban Derailed
by Avalanche of False TV Ads"):
In late January, a Colorado
House Committee killed a measure that would have required
two years of English immersion instruction for non-English
speaking students.
House Bill 1135, sponsored by State Rep. Richard Decker
(R-Fountain), met resistance from parents with English-speaking
children in dual-immersion language programs who said
they feared the bill would stop them from having their
children in such programs. Dual-immersion is the name
given to classrooms divided equally between native-English
speaking students, and non-English speaking students
(usually Spanish-speaking), in which the students
are taught half the day in one language and half the
day in the other.
Such dual-immersion programs are popular with middle-class
parents of English-speaking children who want their
children to learn another language. Because of their
political popularity, dual-immersion programs are
frequently mislabeled "bilingual education programs"
by the bilingual education industry and other bilingual
education advocates. In
actuality "bilingual education" refers to
teaching classrooms full of non-English speaking children
in their native language most of the day, while trying
to teach them English only one or two hours a day.
Decker
rejected the claims of bilingual education advocates
and predicted there would be another effort to pass
an English immersion bill in 2004.
(Mislabeling dual-immersion
programs as "bilingual education programs"
was reportedly one of the factors in heiress Pat Stryker's
decision to donate an incredible $3 million to defeat
a citizens' initiative to end bilingual education
in Colorado.)
Heavily
Immigrant Brooklyn School Shines Due to English Immersion
Principal Jack Spatola
credits the academic success of his mostly poor and
Hispanic elementary students in Brooklyn's Public
School 172 to his decision to abolish bilingual-education
programs in favor of English immersion teaching methods.
Nineteen of every twenty
students at the school are poor enough to qualify
for free meals. And 75 percent of the school's total
enrollment is Hispanic.
"About 80 percent of
our students are eligible to receive bilingual education,"
Spatola said. "But we found that children were learning
English more rapidly [in English immersion classrooms].
We evolved into using what was more effective," he
added.
Thanks to immersion-style
teaching methods, by the end of kindergarten 80 percent
of the school's non-English speaking students are
able to transfer into regular classes. That's one
of the main reasons credited for the fact that 68
percent of the school's students passed the standardized
English exam and 75 percent score as proficient in
math.
Ariz Schools Head
Says English Immersion Stalling Will End
Arizona new schools
Superintendent Tom Horne says that the state's remaining
bilingual classrooms will be shut down by next fall
in compliance with Proposition 203, the statewide
initiative to end bilingual education. Prop. 203 passed
by a 63 percent margin in 2000.
Horne was elected in
2002 after a hard fought campaign in which his strong
support for implementing Proposition 203 dominated
election news. Commenting on the opposition of some
Arizona school administrators to fully convert to
immersion style teaching methods, Horne said, " I
feel the Latino kids are being sacrificed. If they're
not yet fluent in English, they listen to the Spanish
and they're not learning English fast enough."
Fulfilling his campaign
pledge, Horne appointed Margaret Garcia-Dugan as Associate
Superintendent of Education. Garcia-Dugan was a co-chair
of English for the Children - Arizona, the citizens'
organization that led the campaign for Prop. 203.
MA
Legislators Try to Undo Voter Mandate
Last fall the citizens
of Massachusetts voted to end the state's bilingual
education program in favor of a one-year English immersion
program when they passed Question 2 by a landslide
margin of 68 percent. The election made news headlines
because many observers were surprised that ending
bilingual education would prove so popular in a politically
liberal state like Massachusetts, and because voter
support for the measure was very strong in heavily
immigrant districts.
Now, however,
the well-heeled bilingual education industry and its
allies in the Democrat-controlled state legislature
are plotting to undo the voters' will. Ignoring the
latest evidence from California where test scores
of English language learning students have risen dramatically
since the state did away with its massive bilingual
education program in 1998, politicians like State
Representative Peter Larkin (D-Pittsfield) and State
Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge) have introduced bills
to gut key sections of Question 2.
Dr. Rosalie Pedalino
Porter, co-chair of English for the Children - Massachusetts
said, "If any or all of the provisions were to be
put into the law, it would totally overturn the will
of the voters of Massachusetts."
Porter and the people
of Massachusetts appear to have one important ally
in Republican Governor Mitt Romney, who took a strong
stand in support of Question 2 when he ran for governor
last fall.
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Proctor
& Gamble Sponsors Prime Time Ad in Spanish
Some American corporations
seem eager dispense with old-fashioned notions like the
blessing of a common language if they can find a way to
endear themselves to the forces of multiculturalism and
promote the dissolution of the nation that gave them birth.
The well-known American company Proctor & Gamble (P&G) is
one such corporation.
P&G ran a prime-time advertisement
for Crest Toothpaste, one of its best-known brands, during
the February Grammy Awards ceremony on CBS. Although the
program was an English language broadcast, the ad was entirely
in Spanish except for its tagline.
P&G defended the ad by saying
it was targeted at Hispanics who primarily speak English.
Felisa Insignares who works for P&G's "multicultural external
relations department' said, "We need to make sure we communicate
with these consumers who have different levels of acculturation."
ProEnglish executive director
KC McAlpin commented, "I urge Americans who object to P&G's
politically correct but patronizing language policies to
communicate their feelings to P&G directly. One easy way
is to visit their website www.pg.com and send an email message.
People also can write the Vice President of Marketing, Proctor
& Gamble, 1 P&G Plaza, Cincinnati, OH 45201, or simply do
as I do - buy a different toothpaste."
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Rep.
Peter King's Bill to Revoke E.O. 13166 Gains Support in Congress
H.R. 300, Representative Peter
King's bill to repeal Executive Order 13166 (E.O. 13166) is
receiving strong support on Capitol Hill. E.O. 13166 is the
order issued by President Clinton -- and left in place by
President Bush -- which says non-English speaking persons
have a civil right to government services in their own language.
As of the date The ProEnglish Advocate went to press, 60 additional
members of the House, including both Republicans and Democrats,
had signed on as H.R. 300 co-sponsors
Since E.O. 13166 applies to
any entity receiving federal funds, it includes almost all
state and local government offices, as well as doctors, hospitals
and other medical providers that participate in Medicaid and
Medicare programs.
To reach its goal, E.O. 13166
distorts the definition of 'national origin' by equating with
language. Failure to communicate with a non-English speaking
person by providing interpreters and translations of vital
documents can be prosecuted as deliberate discrimination under
the Civil Rights Act. In addition to ordering sweeping translation
and interpreter services, guidelines issued to implement the
measure specify that these services be provided free of charge.
Thus E.O. 13166 is likely to qualify as the most crushing
un-funded mandate in U.S. history, costing federal, state,
and local taxpayers untold billions of dollars when fully
implemented.
ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park
commented, "Revoking E.O. 13166 is ProEnglish's top priority.
The overwhelming desire of the American people to maintain
the linguistic unity of our country was ignored when this
decree was issued. We will not stop working until E.O. 13166
is overturned."
In addition to urging Congress
to pass H.R. 300, ProEnglish and several physicians have filed
suit in federal court to have E.O. 13166 declared unconstitutional
(see story).
IN THE COURTS:
Justice Department
Agrees Judge Erred in ProEnglish v. Bush;
Appeal Ruling Still Uncertain
Under
intense pressure before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals,
U.S. Department of Justice attorney Tovah Calderon conceded
that U.S. District Court judge Leonie Brinkema had blundered
badly by dismissing ProEnglish's lawsuit because Executive
Order 13166 (E.O. 13166) was not "ripe" for review.
Speaking to Calderon, 4th Circuit Judge Dennis Shedd
insisted, "Judge Brinkema got that part wrong, didn't
she?" Calderon in reply, "yes."
ProEnglish with three
medical doctors in active practice filed suit in March
2003, to challenge the constitutionality of E.O. 13166.
The order mandates that all entities and individuals
receiving federal funds pay for and provide interpreters
or translations for non-English speaking immigrants
or risk prosecution for civil rights violations.
The damaging admission
by the Justice Department attorney took place April
2, during oral arguments on ProEnglish's appeal of Judge
Brinkema's decision to dismiss ProEnglish v. Bush on
procedural grounds based almost entirely on the argument
that the order was not "ripe" for judicial review because
the order was not yet in effect. The hearing was held
before a three-judge panel of the court.
ProEnglish attorney Barnaby
Zall characterized E.O. 13166 and its implementing policies
as the government's "Don't Speak English" rule, and
made an impassioned plea that the executive branch of
government had clearly violated the Constitution by
imposing such a sweeping order without even consulting
Congress.
Despite the Justice
Department's damaging admission and the strength of
ProEnglish's constitutional arguments for overturning
E.O. 13166, ProEnglish executive director KC McAlpin
cautioned that the court's decision on ProEnglish's
appeal could go either way. Higher courts are sometimes
reluctant to overturn lower court rulings in cases in
which plaintiffs have the option of re-filing their
lawsuit, as ProEnglish does in ProEnglish v. Bush.
If the 4th Circuit's rules
in favor of ProEnglish, its case will proceed to trial
in the Eastern District of Virginia. A decision could
be announced at any time.
Alaskan Official English Law Pending
Court Appeal
In 1998 Alaskans voted
by an overwhelming 69 percent margin to adopt English
as their official language. But in March 2002 the law
was blocked from taking effect by a state judge who
ruled in favor of an Americans for Civil Liberties (ACLU)
lawsuit claiming the measure violated the Alaskan State
constitution.
Alaskans for a Common
Language, the committee that sponsored the official
English referendum, appealed the judge's ruling to the
State Court of Appeals. A hearing on the appeal is now
expected sometime this summer.
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Santa
Ana Voters Kick Bilingual Ed Activist Out of Office
Bilingual education proponents
suffered a stunning setback Feb.4, when voters in Santa Ana,
California, overwhelmingly voted to recall Santa Ana school
board chairman Nativo Lopez from office. The vote to remove
Lopez was an astounding 70 percent.
Lopez was known as a diehard
champion of bilingual education, and had used his power on
the school board to block the implementation of Proposition
227, the statewide initiative to end bilingual education that
was adopted by a 61 percent margin in 1998.
The vote was significant because
Santa Ana has the highest percentage of Spanish-speakers of
any city in the nation according to the Census. The Lopez
recall campaign was led by Hispanic parents like Vivian Martinez,
who were outraged at the school district's aggressive use
of waivers to avoid putting children in the English immersion
classes called for by Prop. 227. Martinez and other Santa
Ana parents organized a petition drive last spring to put
the recall election on the ballot.
The success of their petition
drive attracted the backing of businessman-entrepreneur Ron
Unz, who organized and funded the 1998 campaign to pass Proposition
227.
In spite of Unz's backing, the
success of the recall campaign and the huge margin of victory
took many by surprise. Lopez had built a powerful local political
machine based on his control of the Santa Ana school budget,
which funds the 5th largest school district in California
and expends a half billion dollars annually.
And as the founder and head
of the Santa Ana based Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (Mexican
National Brotherhood), Lopez had gained the strong support
of Hispanic political activists and a reputation as an outspoken
advocate of "immigrant rights." Lopez's campaign to keep his
seat won the endorsement of The Los Angeles Times and the
active backing of many immigrants' rights organizations such
as The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).
But when the votes were counted,
Lopez had lost every precinct in the district including overwhelmingly
Hispanic precincts, by margins as high as 90 percent. One
factor in Lopez's defeat was the reaction of many Mexican-American
voters who seemed to resent Lopez's blatantly anti-assimilation
appeals. "I hate it when people say because he's a Latino,
he's going to do things for Latinos," said Mary Milanes, a
naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico. "I think
they should be doing it for the community," she added.
Justice
Department Stonewalls City's Bilingual Ballot Queries
The U.S. Department of Justice
is stonewalling questions about how it decided that some Clifton,
New Jersey voting districts were required to provide ballots
and election services in Spanish. Clifton is in Passaic County
where elections have been monitored by the Justice Department
since the county entered into a consent decree in 1999 after
being charged with violating the Voting Rights Act by "diluting
the Hispanic voting strength."
Amendments to The Voting Rights
Act specify that bilingual ballots must be provided whenever
either 5 percent, or 10,000 voters in a district speak a language
other than English, and the language in question is Asian,
American Indian, Alaskan native, or Hispanic in origin. These
groups were singled out for special treatment because the
law's sponsors said that they had a history of "exclusion
from participation in the electoral process."
One result of Justice Department
oversight in Passaic County has been a rapid increase in the
number of Clifton precincts classified as requiring both bilingual
ballots and Spanish language interpreters. For example, last
fall Justice Department monitors added 5 precincts to the
number classified as requiring bilingual services in Clifton,
raising the number to 33 out of 53, or 62 percent of the total.
This struck Clifton city council members as unreasonable.
Only 20 percent of Clifton's population speaks Spanish and
in recent elections no one has used the Spanish-language interpreter
services the city is required to provide at a cost of $30,000
per election.
For the past two years the city
council has asked county, state, and federal officials to
reveal how they determined that the precincts in question
required bilingual services. To date the city has not received
a response. City officials suspect that Justice Department
monitors used "surname analysis" to classify everyone with
an Hispanic surname as Spanish-speaking, Frustrated, Clifton
filed a Freedom of Information Request with the Justice Department
in March, and threatened to file suit. "We want accountability,"
said Clifton City Councilman Stefan Tatarenko. "Why haven't
they answered us?"
Tatarenko, who has led the city's
push on the issue, is an immigrant himself. Of Ukrainian descent,
he arrived in Newark at the age of 7 not speaking a word of
English. "I'm very supportive of the fact that we should all
learn English," said Tatarenko. "Do we start communicating
with everybody in every single language?" He added, "Where
does it stop?"
ProEnglish opposes bilingual
ballot requirements, and supports legislation such as H.R.
931, that would permanently revoke them.
Bush Administration Forces
Penn County to Hire Spanish Speaking Poll Workers
A county commissioner in Pennsylvania
charged the Bush Administration was seeking to curry favor
with Hispanic voters by requiring the county to hire Spanish-speaking
poll workers and to set up a Spanish-only voter information
line.
"We have been told that the
administration will make an example of us, and that is what
makes this fight, this lawsuit, indefensible," said Berks
County Commissioner Tim Reiver. The county official commented
in the wake of a Justice Department lawsuit that charged poll
workers and election officials were denying Puerto Rican voters
"with limited English proficiency an equal opportunity to
participate in the political process and to elect representatives
of their choice."
The lawsuit grew out of a three-year
investigation by Department of Justice employees that alleged
poll workers would sometimes treat Spanish-speaking voters
rudely or make disparaging or insulting remarks. The Justice
Department also found instances in which Hispanic voters were
asked for identification, which is not required under Pennsylvania
law.
The county defended its election
procedures as more than reasonable. According to court filings,
the county made voter registration forms available in Spanish
and 395 of the 407 voting machines in the county's most heavily
Hispanic city, Reading, had instructions in Spanish as well
as English. The county pointed out that despite the presence
of dozens of federal investigators, allegedly derogatory comments
were made in a very few number of precincts over the course
of four different elections.
But the Justice Department insisted
that the county hire an election overseer with the power to
terminate elected polling officials on the spot and act as
both judge and jury. When the county balked, the Department
of Justice filed suit and succeeded in getting a court injunction.
The action was widely viewed as a political act by the Bush
Administration.
County Commissioner Mark Scott
commented, "We think this is part of a national trend toward
a bilingual United States, which we think is a mistake."
Why
are they all AWOL?
"Mitt Romney is the first politician,
Republican or Democrat or Independent, who has come out in
favor of English language teaching for immigrant children.
Not even . . . President [Bush] has."
--- Dr. Rosalie Porter, co-chairman of Massachusetts English
for the Children, in MassNews, April 16, 2003. Dr. Porter
was commenting on the newly elected Governor of Massachusetts,
Republican Mitt Romney, whose open support for Question 2,
a citizens' initiative ending bilingual education, was passed
by Massachusetts voters by a landslide margin of 68 percent
in 2002.
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