|
ProEnglish
to Re-File E.O.13166 Lawsuit
ProEnglish Board members meet
in Arizona this April |
ProEnglish, the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and several individual
physicians will file suit in federal court this summer to
challenge the constitutionality of Executive Order 13166
(EO 13166).
ProEnglish Board Chairman
Bob Park said, “We are excited to be going back into court
and challenging the constitutionality of this order that
attempts to make speaking English to non-English speaking
persons a crime. Our attorneys are hard at work on the case
right now and we plan to make a public announcement when
we file. All I can say now is that it will definitely happen
before Labor Day.”
This will be the second time
that ProEnglish has gone to court to challenge the multilingualism
mandate signed by President Clinton at the end of his term
and kept in place by President Bush. ProEnglish’s first
attempt ended in 2002 when a Clinton-appointed federal judge
dismissed the suit on a technical issue. ProEnglish fought
the decision and the technical issue was later ruled invalid
by an appeals court. Despite the finding, the appellate
court refused to reverse the lower court, and thus the judge’s
maneuver succeeded in keeping the original lawsuit from
receiving a hearing on its merits.
“Stripped of its excuses,
E.O. 13166 is a blatant attempt to circumvent Congress and
force multilingualism on the American people against their
will,” said Park. He added, “The evidence of illegality
and of the huge un-funded mandate it will impose on American
taxpayers is much stronger today than it was when we filed
our first lawsuit trying to overturn it two years ago.”
Park said, “I want to thank all the ProEnglish donors that
made it possible for us to renew this important legal challenge.
This simply would not be possible without their loyal support.”
|
AROUND THE NATION:
Florida town illustrates bilingual
ballot absurdity
The federal government
is forcing tiny Briny Breezes, Fla., to print election
notices in Spanish despite the fact that everyone
who lives there speaks English. The tiny oceanfront
retirement community was also required to provide
bilingual voting information to residents, even though
no election was being held.
The bilingual ballot
provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which Congress
continues to vote for, require all towns within a
county to print ballots in foreign languages when
the number of voters speaking that language in a country
rises above a certain threshold.
So two years ago, the
Justice Department notified Palm Beach County that
more than 5 percent of its registered voters were
Spanishspeaking. As a result every one of its 37 municipalities
must now print ballots in Spanish.
It didn’t matter that
Census data show that 98 percent of Briny Breezes’
population of 411 are life-long US citizens and 99
percent speak English “very well.” Election officials
in Briny Breezes were required to print a double-sided
notice, one side in English, the other in Spanish,
to inform residents that there would be no election.
DC
adopts multilingualism ordinance
The District of Columbia
city government has passed an ordinance that requires
nearly two-dozen city agencies to provide translation
and interpretation services to limited English proficient
(LEP) persons living in the District.
The Language Access
Act was passed unanimously by the D.C. City Council
on April 6 and requires 22 government agencies to
hire bilingual employees and translate official documents
into five other languages: Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese,
Mandarin, and Amharic. On signing the law D.C. Mayor
Anthony Williams said, “Language access is a civil
rights issue . . . This legislation will allow local
immigrant residents access to the District government
services and benefits they need and are entitled to.”
ProEnglish Executive
Director K.C. McAlpin disputed the Mayor’s assertion
that federal civil rights law requires language translation
services. In a letter to Mayor Williams on April 28,
McAlpin said, “The 1964 Civil Right’s Act has no provision
concerning ‘language.’ And it is simply mistaken to
assert that a person’s race or national origin bears
any relationship to the language they speak. For those
reasons, the courts have consistently rejected the
attempt to equate language and national origin for
more than 30 years.”
McAlpin added: “Taxpayer
dollars would be far better spent supporting programs
to teach LEP persons English, thereby improving their
skills and freeing them of the need for language services
for the rest of their lives.” City officials estimated
the ordinance would cost almost $8 million to implement
from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2006.
Legislator
Blocks W Virginia Official English Bill
A bill that would have
made West Virginia the 28th state to have English
as its official language, died in committee at the
hands of a single disgruntled legislator.
The bill passed the
state’s Democratcontrolled Senate by an overwhelmingly
bipartisan vote of 31-3 in March. It was immediately
sent to the House of Delegates. But Democrat Jon Amores
used his power as Judiciary Committee Chairman to
block the bill from coming to a vote in the House.
Supporters have vowed
to reintroduce the bill, but to become law it would
have to pass the Senate again next year. Polls show
the vast majority of West Virginians support official
English.
Governor Ehrlich draws
fire for denouncing multiculturalism & defending English
Maryland’s Republican
Governor Robert L. Ehrlich was compared to Hitler
and accused of fostering “a climate of intolerance”
for saying that multiculturalism was “bunk,” and “with
respect to [American] culture, English is the language.”
The uproar started in
early May when Maryland State Comptroller William
Donald Schaefer, a Democrat, complained publicly about
trying to give his order to a McDonald’s restaurant
employee who could not speak English. Schafer’s comments
immediately came under fire from antiassimilation
activists.
On a radio program
the next day, Gov. Ehrlich came to the Comptroller’s
defense saying that immigrants should learn English
and adding, “There is no such thing as a multicultural
society that can sustain itself, in my view, and I
think history teaches us this lesson.” The governor’s
comments provoked a cascade of newspaper stories with
multicultural activists calling his words “bigoted,”
and political leaders demanding that Ehrlich apologize
for his remarks.
But Erhlich refused
to be cowed. Pressured to back away from his comments
by reporters he said, “It’s a common culture, and
the last message we want to send out is for people
to separate themselves. We should celebrate the common
American culture, the common American values and the
common American language. I think that’s common sense.”
ProEnglish Executive
Director KC McAlpin wrote Gov. Ehrlich thanking him
for telling the truth about the importance of learning
English and for describing multiculturalism as the
divisive, anti- American ideology it is (see story
below).
|
Paper Exposes Anti-Americanism
in Multicultural Education
A newly published paper
from the Lexington Institute reveals multicultural education
as taught in public schools today is a thinly disguised
assault on American ideals, including the ideal of a melting
pot in which anyone can be an American. A major element
in many such multicultural programs is an attack on the
idea of maintaining a common language.
Entitled “A Primer on Multicultural
Education: Unifying or Divisive Force,” the report identifies
two types of multicultural education. One is patterned on
the traditional model that has made the United States the
most sought after immigrant destination on earth. It stresses
traditional American values of personal responsibility,
hard work, competition, democracy, and freedom. Its goal
is to preserve the United States as a free and prosperous
nation.
The other kind teaches that
all things European are inherently “oppressive,” and therefore
rejects assimilation into historic American culture in favor
of maintaining separate ethnic, cultural and linguistic
identities. It demeans American values and promotes grievances
by dividing students according to race and sex into “oppressor”
or “oppressed” categories. It then indoctrinates both groups
by teaching only the negative aspects of American history.
Its goal is to transform the United States into the unexceptional
province of a global police state similar to Aldous Huxley’s
“Brave New World.”
Pushed by organizations like
the National Education Union (NEA) and the National Association
for Multilingual Education (NAME), the second model has
been gaining ascendancy in U.S. public schools during the
last forty years according to the report. These groups use
their institutional control to rigidly enforce their doctrine
throughout the educational system.
The Lexington Institute report
is essential reading for all parents and grandparents who
want to counter the destructive influence of multicultural
ideology in education and to help transmit American history
and values to their children or grandchildren. A free copy
can be obtained by requesting one from the Lexington Institute:
1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 900
Arlington, VA 22209
tel. (703) 522-5828
mail@lexingtoninstitute.org.
Grand Jury documents Santa
Ana California schools’ resistance to immersion law
The Santa Ana Unified School
District continued to flout the state’s education laws and
obstruct students’ learning of English, according to an
Orange County grand jury report issued this past April.
The 20-page report,
entitled “Speaking English in Santa Ana, Proposition 227
Then and Now,” sharply criticizes the district for failing
to implement Proposition 227, the English immersion law
adopted by a landslide vote in a 1998 referendum. According
to the Census, Santa Ana has the highest percentage of residents
who speak Spanish at home of any city in the country.
The report alleges that
Santa Ana Unified fostered an atmosphere that “encouraged
resistance” to the law and maintained programs that inhibited
students’ progress in English. The report also charges that
school officials misled parents into thinking bilingual
education programs were in their children’s best interest
and to seek waivers to keep their children in bilingual
classrooms.
The abuses documented
in the report led to a revolt by Hispanic parents that resulted
in a 2003 recall election. In that election, Nativo Lopez,
the school board chairman who led Santa Ana’s opposition
to Proposition 227, was removed from office by a stunning
70 percent margin.
Since the lopsided recall
vote, the number of waiver requests from parents to keep
their children in bilingual programs has dropped sharply.
Quote of the Day
“The worst mistake was to encourage children to
speak Turkish, Arabic, or Berber in primary schools
rather than Dutch.”
– from a Daily Telegraph (UK) article about a Dutch
government report on the failure of The Netherlands’
assimilation policy (“Dutch race policy a 30-year failure,”
January 20, 2004). |
Soaring English immersion
test results convince California holdouts
For the third year in
a row, California students learning English as a second
language (ESL) scored huge gains in statewide tests measuring
English skills and academic performance, according to test
scores released by the California Department of Education
in March. More than 1.4 million ESL students took the test.
Preliminary results
show the percentage of children ranked in the top two categories
of proficiency has skyrocketed. The number qualifying as
advanced and early advanced increased from 24 percent in
2002 to 43 percent in 2003.
California voters passed
Proposition 227 in 1998, a voter initiative that largely
ended the state’s 30-year old experiment with bilingual
education in favor of traditional English immersion teaching
methods.
The student scores were
so compelling that a number of school districts that had
been resisting the changeover to English immersion classrooms
began throwing in the towel. For instance, officials at
Sassarini Elementary School in Sonoma Calif. announced that
they would end the school’s bilingual education program
next fall.
“A survey of other school
districts in the county with English learners indicates
that those districts that have gone to a structured English
immersion approach have had some measure of success,” said
district Superintendent Kim Jamieson in an interview with
the Sonoma Index-Tribune. “Therefore, it really is time
for us to try a different approach.”
One-fourth of California’s
approximately 6 million public school students speak a language
other than English at home.
|
Sen. Frist introduces stealth multilingual
mandate Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist
(R-Tenn.) has allied himself with those who want to force
multilingualism on the American people.
Frist’s new bill, S. 2217,
the “Closing the Health Care Gap Act of 2004,” claims to
promote improved access to health care services for socalled
“health disparity populations.” Buried in the bill’s language,
however, is an explicit affirmation of the Clinton-era language
mandate known as Executive Order 13166 (E.O. 13166). Thus,
if enacted in its present form, the Republican Majority
Leader’s bill will be used by multilingual activists to
claim congressional authorization for the multilingual edict,
while avoiding the necessity of having an open congressional
debate on the issue in full view of the American people.
This is aptly known as “stealth legislation.” Executive
Order 13166, signed by President Clinton in August 2000,
requires all federal agencies and recipients of federal
financial assistance to provide translation and interpretation
services to limited English proficient (LEP) persons. According
to the order’s radically distorted interpretation of the
1964 Civil Rights Act, failing to provide such services
constitutes illegal discrimination on the basis of national
origin.
Until now, E.O. 13166 has
lacked any authorization by Congress. S. 2217 would grant
E.O. 13166 the legitimacy its supporters have long desired
and make it more difficult to challenge it in the courts.
ProEnglish met with Sen. Frist’s staff to explain the harm
done by the bill’s language and provide detailed recommendations
for changing it. Instead Sen. Frist reintroduced the identical
bill with two new provisions – a special health insurance
tax credit as well as an affirmative action program for
disadvantaged youth – a transparent effort to bribe both
Republicans and Democrats into supporting his bill.
In addition to the damage done
by the backhanded endorsement of E.O. 13166, S. 2217 defines
“health disparity populations” to include non-English speaking
persons and suggests that U.S. taxpayers have a duty to remove
language barriers by providing free translation and interpreter
services. “It’s self-evident
that someone who cannot speak the language of a country is
going to have more difficulty accessing health care services
there than someone who can, just as I would if I moved to
a country like China,” said ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park.
“One of the worst aspects of Sen. Frist’s bill is the concept
that U.S. taxpayers should be required to pay for people who
come here knowing they cannot speak English, but don’t want
to be burdened by the consequences.” ProEnglish
members can communicate their views about S. 2217 to Senator
Frist by faxing him using the ProEnglish
Fax Center found on ProEnglish’s website: www.proenglish.org,
or they can write him care of U.S. Senate, Washington D.C.
20510.
|
The Benefit
to Immigrants
“They need to speak English or they’re going to be
working in the fields.”
– Beatriz
Salas, Mexican immigrant and native Spanish speaker,
who transferred her children to an English immersion
school on the outskirts of town to escape the Santa
Ana, Calif. schools’ bilingual education program –
from the Washington Times, (“Bilingual education,
race to collide in California recall,” Jan. 28, 2003).
|
ELSEWHERE ON CAPITOL HILL:
Rep. Goode introduces
English language amendment in Congress
 Rep.
Virgil Goode (R-VA) has introduced a constitutional amendment
declaring English the official language and requiring all
public acts, records, and judicial proceedings at all levels
of government to be written and communicated in English.
Goode’s amendment, H.J. Res. 94, is the latest in a series
of attempts to enshrine official English in the U.S. Constitution
that began when the late Senator S.I. Hayakawa introduced
such legislation in 1981. ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park said,
“We applaud Rep. Goode for his commitment to protecting
English as our common, unifying language and fully support
his amendment.”
English advocates have long
debated the merits of amending the Constitution to make
English the official language. The lengthy and arduous amendment
process, which requires the approval of two-thirds of Congress
and three-fourths of all state legislatures, should be a
last resort according to some. The argument is that an amendment
is unnecessary unless the courts first rule that a duly
enacted law is unconstitutional. Others think the only way
to make sure that English is the official language is to
enshrine it in the Constitution.
There are currently two proposals
to enact a new law making English the official language
pending in Congress. H.R. 932 by Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
has 51 co-sponsors, and H.R. 997 by Rep. Steven King (R-IA)
has 105 co-sponsors. “ProEnglish
is committed to making English our official language, and
we support every effort in Congress to accomplish that goal,”
he added.
House support builds
for revoking E.O. 13166 H.R.
300, a bill to revoke the Clinton-era executive order requiring
taxpayers to fund translation and interpretation services
for non- English speakers is gaining momentum in Congress,
thanks in part to a renewed ProEnglish lobbying effort launched
this spring.
Introduced by Rep. Peter
King (R-N.Y.), the bill has attracted 77 members of Congress
up from 71 co-sponsors at the beginning of the year. Those
that have added their names to the bill include Reps. John
Kline (R-Minn.), Max Burns (R-Ga.), Jack Kingston (R-Ga.),
Walter Jones (R-NC), Jim Ramstad (R-MN), and Dennis Rehberg
(R-Mont.).
Rep. Tancredo urges
teaching Western Civ.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Co.)
has introduced a non-binding resolution in Congress to recognize
the importance of Western Civilization in America’s classrooms.
He sees it as an antidote to the multicultural ideology
that seeks to demean our history and divide our nation.
“America is the only nation
on earth founded on ideas,” said Tancredo. “If we fail to
transmit those ideas to our children and immigrants, the
ideas will be lost and so will our nation.”
Tancredo’s resolution, House
Concurrent Resolution 377 (H. Con. Res. 377), urges local
school boards and departments of education in all 50 states
to ensure that young people are taught to understand and
appreciate the values, contributions and accomplishments
of Western Civilization. H. Con. Res. 377 currently has
fourteen co-sponsors in the House.
Tancredo and the measure’s
sponsors also are urging state legislators and local school
boards to adopt similar resolutions in their jurisdictions.
The text of House Congressional
Resolution 377 and list of current co-sponsors are available
online at http://thomas.loc.gov.
Civil Rights Commission
to Bash Administration for Slow EO13166 Implementation
Under its highly divisive
chairman, Mary Frances Berry, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission
(USCR) is doing a “review” of federal agencies’ compliance
with Executive Order 13166 (EO 13166). EO 13166 is the executive
order issued by President Clinton in the closing days of
his administration requiring federally funded agencies to
provide translators for non-English speaking immigrants,
or risk prosecution for violating their civil rights.
The order relies on
a definition that equates people’s “national origin” with
the language they speak, a transparently false definition
that has been rejected over and over again by the courts.
Language was not even considered by Congress when it passed
the civil rights law. According to the congressional record,
the phrase “national origin” was intended to mean the country
that someone came from, and nothing else.
But Berry’s letter to the
federal agencies notifying them of the USCR review simply
assumes that the false definition is valid.
| “One of the principal responsibilities of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights is to appraise the laws and
policies of the Federal Government with respect to discrimination
or denials of equal protection of the laws under the
Constitution because of race, color, religion, sex,
age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration
of justice (Section 3(a)(2) P.L. 103- 419). Under this
mandate the Commission is undertaking a study on eliminating
language barriers to federal programs and services.” |
The Commission’s initiative
is a classic example of how un-elected federal bureaucrats
twist the meaning of words in order to promote their goal
of a leviathan multicultural state. Note that the elimination
of such “language barriers” will require the expenditure
of billions of dollars to hire vast numbers of government
interpreters and provide an endless stream of document translations.
The Bush Administration, which has gone to court to contest
Berry’s autocratic and highly politicized control of the
Civil Rights Commission, may yet regret its decision not
to revoke EO 13166 when it first took office. The word is
that the Berrycontrolled USCRC staff plans to complete its
review of the federal government’s EO 13166 compliance and
issue its report in July, in time to excoriate the Bush
Administration for another civil rights “failure” just ahead
of the President’s bid for re-election.
IN THE COURTS:
Colorado judges spring alien sex offender over language
The Colorado Supreme Court
ruled that prosecutors could not use incriminating statements
against Dagoberto Aguilar-Ramos, an illegal immigrant
who was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault in
2002, due to a mistranslated Miranda warning.
Aguilar-Ramos was given
a printed Miranda rights form in Spanish and indicated
that he understood it at least three times. But the
interrogating officer’s limited Spanish proficiency
was found to have “rendered him unable to effectively
communicate” with the defendant.
Multiculturalists
sue for Mass. school exams in Spanish
A multicultural advocacy
group has filed suit claiming that the exam Massachusetts’
high school students must pass in order to graduate
is unfair to Spanish-speaking students because it is
given in English.
The Multicultural Education,
Training and Advocacy Coalition (META) that filed the
suit in March, is demanding that the parts of the exam
that evaluates students’ proficiency in subjects such
as math and history be given in Spanish. A separate
exam would evaluate the students’ fluency in English.
ProEnglish executive director
K.C. McAlpin said the lawsuit was without merit. “The
United States has the same right as any other nation
to insure that its high school graduates are fluent
in the national language, which is English,” he said.
“It’s not in our interest as a nation, to award high
school diplomas to people who cannot speak, read, or
understand the national language well enough to take
tests in it.”
The other reason to reject
the lawsuit is fairness. The requirement to take the
exam in English is the same for Spanish speakers as
it is for native speakers of the 300 plus other languages
now spoken in the U.S.
Judge’s anger means delay in EEOC
case
Judge Steven McNamee,
the federal judge presiding in the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit charging an Arizona
couple with discrimination for having an Englishon-
the-job rule in their small town drive-in restaurant,
has delayed ruling on an EEOC motion. The judge appears
to be delaying out of anger at the Kidmans for defending
themselves against the EEOC charges.
During a conference last
fall, Judge McNamee exploded in rage when he learned
that in spite of enormous pressure from a court-appointed
magistrate, the Kidmans had refused to accept a draft
consent decree that the EEOC had drawn up to settle
the case. In desperation, the EEOC then asked the judge
to force the Kidmans to settle the case on the EEOC’s
terms and give up their constitutional right to a fair
trial. Briefs on the EEOC motion were completed and
filed with the court in early February. Normally a ruling
would have been made within one or two months at most.
While Judge McNamee may
be reluctant to rule for the EEOC, court observers say
he appears to be delaying out of anger at the Kidmans
for rejecting the EEOC offer that would have cleared
the case from his court docket. In the meantime, the
Kidmans’ English-on-the-job policy remains intact, and
their restaurant, RD’s Drive-In, continues to thrive
despite the uncertainty under which Judge McNamee is
forcing them to live.
ProEnglish has contributed
financially to the Kidmans' legal defense. |
The ProEnglish Advocate is published quarterly by ProEnglish.
ProEnglish is a non-profit membership-based organization
dedicated to educating the American people about the importance
of preserving English as our common language and making
it the official language of the U.S. All contributions to
ProEnglish are tax-deductible.
|
