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 hat
exactly may America ask of immigrants? According to a Hispanic-rights
lobby press
conference recently, absolutely nothing.
On August 23rd,
the National Council of La Raza sponsored a press conference on
the "National Hispanic Leadership Agenda." After all the
speeches were made and all the questions answered, nary a word had
been uttered suggesting that Hispanic immigrants, legal or illegal,
had any obligations whatsoever to the United States.
The notion
of expanded rights for illegal aliens, however, came up early and
often, thanks to speakers for both the National Council of La Raza
and the AFL-CIO's Labor Council for Latin American Workers.
Another press
conference participant, Brent Wilkes, the executive director of
the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), complained
that some people had far too many rights in the USA:
We really
resent the fact that a group like the Center
for Immigration Studies would be coming out with statements
trying to purport to say how Hispanics are going to behave [politically]
in the future. They really have no business doing that.
Now America
is a land where illegal aliens can hold press conferences and even
mass rallies to demand their rights. Surely the CIS political scientists
might be allowed a little freedom of speech as well?
La Raza's president,
Raul Yzaguirre, even found time to complain about "political
reaction from the Republican Party" to the Bush Administration's
trial balloons on amnesty. The nerve of those Republicans —
making a Republican president aware of their views.
The subtext
of this press conference was a demonstration of Hispanic unity,
a unity which does not exist among their claimed constituency. While
a speaker from the National Puerto Rican Coalition can share a podium
with a speaker from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education
Fund, outside the confines of the National Press Building it is
generally a different story.
Tomas Hernandez,
a Mexican immigrant complained to the Philadelphia Inquirer
on August 19th: "up there [evidently North Philadelphia], they're
mostly Puerto Ricans, Dominicans. We don't like it much."
Team Bush should realize that far fewer Americans would be upset
about immigration issues if the federal government simply ceased
encouraging immigrants and their children to remain in a linguistic
ghetto.
President Bush
could show himself to be a pro-Hispanic, pro-assimilation Republican
by repealing Clinton Executive Order 13166. EO 13166 creates an
enforceable legal right to receive services from any recipient of
federal funds in the language of one's choice. EO 131666 not only
has no basis in federal law, it is absolutely dreadful social policy.
And if EO 13166 remains of the books while millions of immigrants
are granted amnesty, the costs of this Clinton-era mandate will
grow exponentially.
The other thing
Bush might do to position himself as a pro-Hispanic, pro-assimilation
Republican would be to take a strong stand against a provision of
S.1, the Senate-passed Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization
now in conference.
Thanks to an
amendment
offered by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) and passed by a vote
of 62-34,
S.1 would authorize a quadrupling of federal spending for bilingual
education programs, despite the fact that bilingual education actually
prevents
immigrant children from learning English.
Repealing EO
13166 and insisting that Congress reject the Lincoln amendment to
S.1 would send a clear message that required no translation: immigrants
have a responsibility to learn English. That is a message nearly
all Americans, both immigrant and native-born would be glad to hear.
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