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 eports
out of Boston indicate that a bus driver's inability to understand
English may have helped cause the death of
four middle-school
students. So long as Executive Order 13166 remains the law of the
land, these deaths could be just the beginning.
Both the Boston
Globe and the Boston Herald reported on May 16th that
bus driver Hin Chi Kan had told a parent chaperone shortly before
the bus crashed in Sussex, New Brunswick, that he spoke "only
a little English" and that he might need the parent to translate
for him.
Kan's attorney,
Darrell Mook, denied these reports, telling the Herald: "I
think he [Kan] does [know English]. To get a (commercial driver's
license), at least a portion of the test is in English."
Clinton Executive
Order 13166 declared that language choice is now a protected civil
right. The Department of Transportation's Guidance
to Recipients on Special Language Services to Limited English Proficient
(LEP) Beneficiaries, issued in compliance with EO 13166
during the final days of the Clinton administration, insists that
the inability to speak English should not keep anyone from driving
on our nation's roads because "the inability of LEP persons
to obtain driver's licenses presents serious problems."
The DOT
Guidance took specific note of the safety issue and dismissed
it: "It is interesting to note that the State [of Alabama]
produced no evidence at trial that non-English speakers pose greater
highway safety risks than English speakers."
If a state
or locality chooses to insist on English fluency for prospective
drivers for safety reasons, it can now expect a legal complaint:
Assertions
of safety justifications would generally not be accepted unless
accompanied by statistical and/or scientific causality studies
and evidence showing a positive correlation between limited English
proficiency and crash and death/injury rates at rates substantially
higher than would be expected due to chance.
(Unless the
police administer English-comprehension tests at every accident
scene, such data will never exist.)
You might think
that the Bush administration would be eager to repeal this manifestly
absurd relic of the Clinton era. You would be wrong.
Last week,
at a sparsely attended hearing of the Subcommittee on Treasury,
Postal Service, and General Government Subcommittee of the House
Appropriations Committee, Mitch Daniels, the Director of the Office
of Management and Budget, told Chairman Ernest Istook (R., Okla.)
that the Bush administration had no plans to repeal EO 13166: "The
intention of the administration is to leave the Executive Order
in place but to review [the regulations issued pursuant to it] very
carefully as to their substance and form."
Congressman
Istook pressed Director Daniels on this point, noting that: "The
Executive Order is what set off these responses. I frankly wonder
if this is an Executive Order the current administration might rescind
or amend."
After Istook
enumerated some of the potential dangers of EO 13166, Daniels told
him: "You've impressed me with all the possible implications."
But there are
hints that some in the Bush administration believe that repealing
EO 13166 would send the wrong message to Hispanic voters.
One hopes that
the White House will act before more kids are sacrificed on the
altar of political correctness.
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