Congress’s Choice
Tax cuts or EEOC offices in San Juan?

By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director, English First.
April 20, 2001 9:35 a.m.

ant a good reason for President Bush's tax cuts?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has $303.8 million to spend this year. That tidy sum will fuel the EEOC's drive to create a right to language choice in every American workplace — an effort which now includes the creation of a new EEOC office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, complete with a 14-member staff.

An EEOC office in Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico will do wonders to advance the agency's anti-English agenda, given that English speakers are about as popular in Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico as they are in French-speaking Quebec.

The Toronto Star reported that unlike the United States, Puerto Rico's mind is made up on language matters:

¡Español si, ingles no! [Spanish yes, English no.] For a century, that has been the rallying cry on this largely apolitical isle, the singularly unifying issue that cuts across race and colour (sic), ethnicity and ideology.

According to a 1997 report by the New York Times, "90% of the island's 650,000 public school students lack basic English skills" (this link requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader).

EEOC Chairwoman Ida Castro, herself a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, has been an outspoken advocate of language rights. At a June, 1999 EEOC hearing in Houston on discrimination against low-wage workers, Castro complained:

Due to a lack of education, cultural differences, and language barriers, too many low-wage workers are unaware of their rights, unfamiliar with EEOC's charge processing procedures, and unable to get a fair shot at the American dream (emphasis added).

Castro was joined at this hearing by the AFL-CIO, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Houston Immigration and Refugee Coalition and Texas Rural Legal Aid. These folks were not likely to emphasize the value of encouraging low-wage workers to learn English.

The EEOC swiftly began an aggressive language-rights litigation effort. An EEOC settlement with a Chicago manufacturer resulted in a payment of $192,500 to eight Hispanic former employees. An EEOC lawsuit against a bankrupt firm, Premier Operator Services, Inc., netted 13 Hispanic employees a record $700,000 in damages. (For the details, see "How to Defeat an English-Only Rule."

Last September, the EEOC boasted that allegations of "national origin discrimination based on English-only rules have skyrocketed" from just 77 in 1996 to 365 as of September, 2000. The EEOC's success in enforcing its idiosyncratic interpretation of national origin discrimination law is astounding, given that Congress has never made language choice a protected civil right.

Thankfully, Congressman Ron Paul (R., TX) has asked President Bush to impose a hiring freeze at the EEOC, which would, among other things, block the proposed San Juan branch office.

Congressman Paul understands what some of his colleagues do not: A surplus of money in the government's treasury simply leads to a surfeit of government regulations.