Summer '05
 
     
 
ProEnglish members sue to stop multilingual driver's exams in Ala.
Five members of ProEnglish in Alabama filed suit against the governor and the director of Alabama's department of public safety demanding that they enforce the State's official English law by ending the practice of giving driver's license exams in foreign languages. Alabama currently makes its driver's license exams available in thirteen languages including Arabic, Russian, Thai, Greek, and Farsi, the Iranian language.
     The suit charges the policy violates the State's constitution, which was amended to make English the official language by an overwhelming 9-1 margin in a 1990 voter referendum. A victory in the case would have national significance due to the fact that 27 states now have official English laws on the books.
     "On one hand this suit is about democracy and holding government accountable to the people's will," said ProEnglish Executive Director K.C. McAlpin. "But on the other hand it's about government officials' dereliction of their duty to protect the public's safety for the sake of appeasing ethnic special interest groups and big business," he added.
     		Southeastern Legal Foundation attorneys, who are representing the five ProEnglish members in the lawsuit, filed the case May 17. The action took place a year and a half after ProEnglish first wrote Alabama Governor Bob Riley, asking him to restore the English policy.
     When he was a member of Congress in 2000, Riley together with fourteen other congressmen signed ProEnglish's U.S. Supreme Court brief defending Alabama's policy requiring driver's license applicants to take their exams in English. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled for Alabama in the famous Sandoval decision. ProEnglish reminded Riley of his previous stand in favor of Alabama's policy.
     "When Governor Riley failed to reply to our first letter, we wrote him again and sent the letter by certified mail to make sure it was received," said McAlpin. "It was hard to believe that the Governor would do a complete about face on this issue after having been a reliable friend of official English all the years he served in Congress," he added.
House official English bill rockets past previous support level.
In the few short months since Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced a bill in the House to make English the official language, more than a quarter of the entire House of Representatives has cosponsored the bill.
     As this newsletter went to press King's bill, H.R. 997, already had 123 co-sponsors, 15 more than the identical bill had by the end of the last Congress.
     "The speed at which House members have signed up to co-sponsor H.R. 997 in the new Congress is no accident," said Ben Piper, director of government relations for ProEnglish. "I know from my many visits to Capitol Hill offices that it's due in large part to the effective lobbying of ProEnglish members who have sent faxes, signed petitions, and made phone calls to their congressman in support of this bill," he added. "Any bill that has this much bipartisan support this early in the new Congress simply cannot be ignored by the leadership.
     		Among the promising signs is the fact that many new members of Congress have signed on as H.R. 997 co-sponsors, including Reps. Geoff Davis (R-KY), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Charles Boustany (R-LA), John Kuhl (R-N.Y.), Kenny Marchant (RTX), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Mike Sodrel (R-IN), and Tom Price (R-GA). And several Democrats have added their endorsement including: Reps. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), Gene Taylor (DMS), Lincoln Davis (D-TN), and Colin Petersen (D-MN).
     ProEnglish supporters can visit the ProEnglish website at www.proenglish.org to send a free fax message to their representatives in Congress urging them to co-sponsor H.R. 997.
    
ProEnglish appeals ruling shielding EO13166 from legal scrutiny.
ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park announced ProEnglish is appealing the decision handed down March 8, by Federal Judge Barry Moskowitz in San Diego, Calif., dismissing ProEnglish's lawsuit challenging U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rules implementing Executive Order 13166 (E.O. 13166).
     Attorneys from the Pacific Legal Foundation representing ProEnglish, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and several doctors in private practice, filed notice of appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
     E.O. 13166 mandates that government agencies and other recipients of federal funds provide free translation services for persons who don't speak English. Such recipients, which include almost all state and local government agencies as well as doctors who participate in Medicaid or Medicare, that fail to provide multilingual services can face civil rights prosecution and loss of federal funds.
     Judge Moskowitz found that neither ProEnglish nor the physician coplaintiffs demonstrated sufficient injury-in-fact to have the standing to challenge the HHS rules in court.
     Park slammed Judge Moskowitz's ruling as a blatant effort to shield E.O. 13166 from legal scrutiny by invoking a double standard for standing. "As our suit pointed out, federal courts routinely grant standing to individuals and groups like 'Friends of the Earth' with far less specific allegations of injury-in-fact than ProEnglish and its physician co-plaintiffs 		demonstrated in our complaint," Park said.
     "In the Friends of the Earth case, a plaintiff's claim that he liked to fish, camp, swim, and picnic near a river that 'smelled polluted' was deemed a sufficient injury to have standing. But in Judge Moskowitz's highly selective view, the government's threat to label doctors 'discriminators' and haul them into court if they fail to change the way they communicate with their non- English speaking patients is in fact, no injury at all.
     Park said ProEnglish was very disappointed by the judge's decision, which if it stands will prevent a judicial review of the legality of HHS's mandatory translation rules. "Unless your cause is politically correct, there is no equal access to the law in this country, " Park charged.
     This is the second time in three years 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 judge dismissed the suit over another questionable procedural issue. ProEnglish appealed and was vindicated when the appeals court found that the lower court had erred. But the appellate court refused to reverse the lower court citing other grounds, and the legal maneuvering succeeded in keeping the case against E.O. 13166 from being heard on its merits.
In the courts:
NYC multilingual activists go after private hospitals
Using familiar public relations shakedown tactics, an immigrants rights advocacy group filed civil rights complaints with the New York Attorney General's office charging that four private hospitals in New York City had violated Executive Order 13166 (E.O. 13166) by failing to provide adequate translation services for their non- English speaking patients.
     The charges were made by the New York Immigration Coalition, which complained that public hospitals have been "much more responsive" to their demands to hire interpreters and translators than private hospitals. The group based its complaint on the hospitals' alleged failure to provide adequate language services for patients seeking treatment in the hospitals' emergency rooms. Executive Order 13166 mandates that health care providers that translation services for non- English
     		receive even one dollar of federal aid provide free speaking patients. President Clinton issued the order without any notification or debate in Congress. Just as ProEnglish predicted, E.O. 13166 is turning health care institutions like hospitals into targets of opportunity for harassment and shakedown efforts by multilingual advocacy groups.
     Rather than fight these claims in court, or challenge the legal standing of self-interested groups like the New York Immigration Coalition, the targeted institutions typically settle such complaints by agreeing to hire bilingual employees and interpreters referred to them by groups like the Immigration Coalition or its network of allies. Meanwhile U.S. health care costs continue to soar. ProEnglish is challenging the legality of E.O. 13166 in federal court (see story p.2).
Employer sues for crane operator test in Spanish.
     A Southern Calif. tree nursery filed a lawsuit claiming that California discriminates against foreign-language speaking workers by not offering safety tests in their languages.
     GroWest claims its only crane operator, who has worked for them 24 years, failed the statemandated Certification for Crane Operators (CCO) exam because of the policy. The company's vice president stated, "It is my understanding and belief that had the [test] been given in Spanish, Mr. Ledesma would have passed it.
     "The issue doesn't have anything to do with discriminating against people who do not speak English, but everything to do with safety," rebutted Graham Brent, executive director of the state commission that produces the test. Crane operators must be able to read English-language safety manuals, maintain required records and report unsafe conditions in English.
     State attorney David Pies added, "Certain growers want to be able to continue to use workers who do not speak, read, or write English proficiently to operate cranes, regardless of the risk to them or their co-workers.		 ProEnglish intervenes to assist appeal of NJ court decision.
     ProEnglish has intervened to assist the appeal of a New Jersey court ruling that held non-English speaking persons had legal rights beyond those available to English speaking persons.
     The case, Diniz v. Heits, arose in a dispute over a franchise agreement for building janitorial services. The New Jersey state judge presiding in the case ruled that because she did not speak English, Diniz was allowed to break her franchise agreement with a local building services company named Heits.
     The judge ruled in favor of Diniz despite the fact that a bilingual employee of the franchise company had answered all of Diniz's questions about the contract in her native language, and the fact that Diniz had consulted with her attorney about the franchise agreement before deciding to pay the second installment of her franchise fee.
     Commenting on the case, ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park said, "The idea that non-English speaking immigrants have legal rights superior to those enjoyed by English speaking Americans in the United States simply because the immigrants in question don't speak the English language is a concept that ProEnglish will fight with everything we have.
    
In Washington:
Rep. Tancredo introduces official English amendment
Wary of passing laws that can be overturned by activist judges, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) recently introduced legislation amending the U.S. Constitution to make English the official language of the United States.
     His bill, H.J. Res. 43, would require all official acts, records, and proceedings of the U.S. government to be conducted in English. H.J. Res. 43 is the latest in a series of attempts to put official English in the U.S. constitution that began with the late Senator S.I. Hayakawa (R-CA), who introduced the first such amendment in 1981.
     Official English advocates have long debated the merits of amending the constitution. The argument for it is that a constitutional amendment is the only sure way to protect the measure from legal attack by judges acting in concert with anti- English groups. 		But other official English supporters argue the lengthy and arduous amendment process that requires the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three fourths of all state legislatures, should be the last resort. They point out that until a law is enacted and later overturned in court, official English opponents will argue that amending the constitution is unnecessary.
     "Since he was first elected to Congress eight years ago, Representative Tom Tancredo has been an ally and a leader of the official English movement," said ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park.
     Park added: "We salute him for his leadership in introducing the amendment and pledge to do all we can to help him build support and pass H.J. Res. 43 in the 109th Congress.
Sen. Coburn introduces Senate bill repealing E.O. 13166.
     Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has introduced the first bill in the U.S. Senate that seeks to repeal Executive Order 13166 (E.O. 13166). The bill, S. 557, would nullify the Clinton-era order that requires all government agencies and recipients of federal funds to provide translations and interpreters for non-English speakers in virtually any language - free of charge.
     "This enormously expensive measure requires taxpayers to finance the cost of providing [language assistance] services," wrote Coburn, in a letter he recently sent to his Senate colleagues explaining why he introduced the bill. "Yet neither Congress, nor any state or local legislative body was consulted before the order was put into effect.
     As a physician, the first-term Senator is also deeply concerned about the impact E.O. 13166 has on the medical profession. Physicians and health care providers that participate in Medicaid or Medicare are now at risk of civil rights complaints and prosecution if they fail to provide translations and interpreter services deemed
     "reasonable" by remote government bureaucrats in Washington.
     E.O. 13166 also increases the risk that doctors will be sued for malpractice.
     "The requirement to provide medical translations in an unknown number of foreign languages transfers legal liability for translation errors and omissions to the medical provider," Coburn wrote. "Due to the already exorbitant cost of medical liability coverage, doctors cannot afford increases in their insurance costs." "All these factors combine to discourage physicians from locating in areas with large limited English proficient (LEP) populations, or from accepting new LEP patients. Thus, Executive Order 13166 threatens to diminish the delivery of health care to the very population it was designed to benefit," he added.
     ProEnglish supporters who use the Internet can send a free fax message to their Senators and Representatives urging them to co-sponsor these bills by visiting the Fax Center on ProEnglish's website (www.proenglish.org). 		Congressional support for E.O. 13166 repeal increases
     The bill, H.R. 136, already has 53 co-sponsors. H.R. 136 would nullify Executive Order 13166 signed by President Clinton in 2000 and left in place by President Bush. The order requires all federal agencies and recipients of federal funds to provide translations and interpreters for non English speaking persons free of charge.
     In addition to ProEnglish, several professional associations and other affected groups have expressed growing opposition to E.O. 13166. Soon after President Bush took office, the American Medical Association wrote a letter urging him to rescind the order citing the enormous financial burden E.O. 13166 imposes on doctors and hospitals.
     The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators warned that E.O. 13166 could force state motor vehicle departments to give driver's license tests in hundreds of foreign languages, and open the door to a massive increase in driver's license fraud.
     Confirming that warning, Colorado law enforcement officials cracked a ring of state motor vehicle department employees accused of exploiting foreign-language driver's tests to put hundreds of illegal aliens behind the wheel. The ring's alleged mastermind told investigators that he often sat next to applicants who could not speak English, posing as a translator while actually providing test-takers with answers to test questions he had memorized.
     More recently, affordable housing advocates joined the protest against E.O. 13166. Property managers and owners of government subsidized housing are concerned that translating leases, rent notices, and tenant information into dozens of foreign languages will force them to divert scarce resources from building maintenance and tenant services. Owners are also worried they will be legally liable for translation errors and omissions.
     Senator Tom Coburn has introduced a companion bill to H.R. 136 in the U.S. Senate (see story p 4).
Around the World:
Philippines mull requiring schools to teach in English.
     A proposed law endorsed by 137 of the 236 members of the Philippines House of Representatives as well as the country's president, would specify English as the principal language of instruction in all Philippine schools.
     The bill would end the practice of teaching in both Filipino and English in favor of teaching in English alone, except for classes that teach the Filipino language. The law also would encourage English to be used for student-teacher interaction throughout the school system.
     The law's supporters cited competition from neighboring Asian countries for English proficiency skills as the primary reason for passing the law. The legislature plans to consider the bill this summer


Translation error panics currency markets.     
A translation error in a story about a potential revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Yuan, sent the dollar plunging on the world's trillion dollar a day international currency markets in early May.
     A reporter for the China News Service, a Chinese government agency, wrote a story in Chinese speculating on the impact of an upward revaluation of the Yuan. But when the online People's Daily translated the story into English it erroneously reported the revaluation as a fact.
     Within minutes the error generated worldwide panic as currency traders rushed to dump dollars for other currencies. When the translation error was later detected and revealed, traders stampeded to buy the dollar back and many were caught moving the wrong way - resulting in millions of dollars in trading losses.   

Driving Safety #101.
     "If these [Spanish speaking] workers can't recognize or interpret a sign that shows that something is dangerous, that will present a problem.
     -U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics official Victoria Dinkins commenting on a 72 percent increase in on-the-job traffic fatalities in Alabama during 2003, as quoted in The Birmingham News, Sept. 22, 2004.
    
Across the Nation:
Dallas official wants school principals to learn Spanish
A proposal before the Dallas school board would require principals to learn the native language spoken by the majority of their students - effectively forcing school principals to learn Spanish.
     Forty-three percent of students in Dallas public schools speak Spanish as their native language. Supporters of the measure argue it would make communication with parents more effective and help children get a better education.
     The plan's architect, Dallas Schools Trustee Joel May, says that multilingualism is part of the state's history. "I'm not pushing any 		change . . . bilingual, bicultural way of life has been in this state before the Alamo was here," he said.
     But Harry Trujillo with the Dallas Council of PTAs said he believes that immigrant parents, not principals, should be required to learn a new language - English.
     "English should play a big role. This is America.…[in the past] when people have come to this great nation, they have had to learn the English language," Trujillo said, according to Fox News.
     The Dallas school board will formally take up the plan this summer.
W. Va. Governor reluctantly vetoes official English.
West Virginia almost became the 28th state to declare English its official language this spring.
     For years official English supporters in the West Virginia legislature have seen their efforts to pass legislation blocked by one individual, State Delegate Jon Amores (D-Charleston) who uses his power as Judiciary Committee Chairman to prevent the legislation from coming to the House floor for a vote.
     This spring State Senator Larry Edgell (D-Wetzel Co.) introduced an official English bill that passed by a lopsided 30-4 vote in the state Senate, only to see it once again blocked by Amores in the House.
     Democrats solidly control both legislative chambers.
     To get around Amores, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Billy Wayne Bailey (D-Wyoming Co.) inserted a declaration making English the official language in a parks-and-recreation bill. The bill quickly passed both houses of the legislature. But the legislative 		maneuver prompted media outlets across the country to report falsely that West Virginia had "accidentally" passed an official English bill.
     Despite near hysterical newspaper editorials opposing the bill, supporters had hopes that Democratic Governor Joe Manchin would sign it into law. Manchin had sponsored official English legislation when he was a member of the legislature. But the Governor vetoed the bill. He claimed he supported official English, but said he was concerned the law would be overturned because of a state law prohibiting any one bill from addressing two unrelated issues.
     ProEnglish Executive Director K.C. McAlpin commented, "We are encouraged by how close the bill came to passage, and happy that the governor has reaffirmed his support of official English. The battle to add West Virginia to the growing list of states with English as their official language will go on until we win.
Arizona Governor blocks official English
Sponsor vows to put issue on ballot in '06.
With strong public support including that of ProEnglish members across Arizona, State Representative Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) managed to pass an official English bill in both houses of the Arizona legislature this spring. But Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano vetoed the bill, and was able to stop Arizona from becoming the 28th state with English as its official language.
     The bill specified that all official actions of the state had to be conducted in English, and barred discrimination against English speakers. And it made common sense exceptions for using a foreign language in private speech, and for government use in emergencies, trade, education, and law enforcement.Rep. Pearce also sponsored a referendum to let Arizona citizens vote on making English the official language by amending their state constitution. But because there are already a large number of issues on the ballot this year, Pearce decided to put the referendum off until 2006.
     I didn't want to fatigue the voters with too many ballot initiatives," Rep. Pearce told ProEnglish. "It's simply strategy.
     We want to introduce the bill when it has the strongest chance of passing…
     		The leadership [of the legislature] is behind me on this: We agreed to pull all of the [ballot initiatives] until next year.Arizona passed official English in 1988 through an initiative campaign led by ProEnglish Chairman Bob Park, founder of Arizonans for Official English.
     But a federal judge struck the law down. When the state refused to appeal, Park and other ProEnglish board members founded ProEnglish to defend the Arizona law. A ten-year court battle culminated in a victory for the initiative at the U.S. Supreme Court.
     But the victory was short-lived because Arizona's Supreme Court soon ruled that the law was unconstitutionally restrictive. This remains the only case in which opponents of official English succeeded in blocking a state official English law, despite mounting numerous legal challenges in other states.
     Rep. Pearce drafted his new amendment to avoid the objections to the 1988 law raised by the Arizona Supreme Court. ProEnglish believes Pearce's revised amendment will pass overwhelmingly if put on the ballot, and is likely to withstand any court challenge.
Whatever happened to "citizenship?"
It is impossible to have a serious conversation about immigration reform without addressing the issue of citizenship.
     This was the premise of a recent speech given by California businessman and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think thank.
     In a speech, titled "On Becoming American: Reasserting Citizenship in the Immigration Debate," Simon used citizenship as a proxy for assimilation. He argued that partisans on both sides of the isle have failed to grasp its importance.
     Liberals, for example, push diversity at all costs, emphasizing "pluribus," but no "unum." Conservatives, on the other hand, often reduce immigration to a simple law and order issue, or see the debate through the narrow lens of economics.
     Without an emphasis on assimilation, immigration and diversity will inevitably weaken and divide, not strengthen us as a nation. Diversity, in Simon's view, should complement, not contradict our unity and founding principles.
     In a June 8, 2005 column, titled "Candor on Immigration," Washington Post columnist Robert 		Samuelson also argued that the assimilation process is breaking down, but not for lack of emphasis on integrating newcomers.
     Instead, he argues that the numbers of new arrivals are simply overwhelming the system."Being brutally candid means recognizing that the huge and largely uncontrolled flow of unskilled Latino workers into the United States is increasingly sabotaging the assimilation process," wrote Samuelson.
     He added: "Americans rightly glorify our heritage of absorbing immigrants… But no society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many are poor and unskilled.
     Amazingly, neither Simon nor Samuelson mentioned the importance of learning English - despite the fact that learning English has historically been the most important step in the assimilation process.
     Simon concluded that citizenship education programs could assimilate newcomers. Samuelson, on the other hand, went a step further, arguing that in order to make immigration succeed, we first need to reduce immigration numbers

Driving Safety #102.
Common road warning signs in English:

Stop for Children in Crosswalk ---- Yield to Oncoming Traffic ---- Do Not Enter When Flooded Slow: Children Playing ---- Deaf Child Area ---- No Turn on Red While Pedestrian Is In Intersection ---- Trucks Entering Highway

Most Americans are unaware that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of licensed drivers on U.S. roads and highways that don't have a clue what these warning signs mean, thanks to policies in many states that allow driver's license applicants to take their exams in dozens of foreign languages. ProEnglish members in Alabama are suing to end this.

California educators sue for bilingual tests.
     The California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE) is suing the state of California to force the state to offer its statewide achievement tests, including English fluency tests, in Spanish.
     The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires states to track the academic performance of its schools. Under the law, schools that persistently under-perform can be forced to let students transfer to more successful schools, or even lose federal funding. California uses the California Standards Tests in English Language Arts and Mathematics to track student performance.
     CABE, joined by ten school districts, the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC), and a bilingual-education lobbying organization called Californians Together, 		sued the state, alleging that the California Standards Tests do not properly measure the academic achievement of "English Language Learners" because the tests are offered only in English. They argue that the No Child Left Behind Act requires tests to be offered in a student's native language.
     "This is not about relaxing accountability," Lowell Billings, superintendent of one the school districts filing the lawsuit, said, according to the San Diego Union Tr ibune, "It's not about circumventing [Prop.] 227 (the Calif. law banning bilingual education).
     Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education counters, "Part of our content standards is English Language Arts, and it's hard to test that if you're not doing that in English.
     
 
   
     
 
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