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By Jim Boulet, Jr. Executive Director English First |
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While Bill Clinton was flying to Los Angeles for the Democratic convention on Friday, August 11, he took a moment to sign Executive Order 13166. It is now this nation's legal duty to make sure you still get your welfare checks, food stamps and all other government benefits should you choose not to trouble yourself to learn the American tongue. While there is plenty of this sort of thing going on already, Executive Order 13166 breaks considerable new legal ground. The theory underlying this sweeping new policy is that to provide services solely in English could "discriminate on the basis of national origin." The Clinton Executive Order 13166, as interpreted by the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice, requires every recipient of federal funds, including "a federally assisted zoo or theater…to take reasonable steps to provide meaningful opportunities for access" by Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals. What might these reasonable steps consist of? Walter Olson's book on employment-discrimination law, The Excuse Factory, reported that one activist from Yale has actually suggested that America must accommodate "difference of speech" by "forcing employers to hire supervisors familiar with the languages their workers wish to speak in and banning the practice of preferring workers with readily understood accents." The track record of the civil-rights industry and its allies in government suggests more good reason for concern. The Americans with Disabilities Act has provoked litigation over alcoholic airline pilots and half-blind truck drivers. A Rand Corporation study found that an employer can expect to spend $12,000 or more defending against these frivolous lawsuits. Concerns about the potential costs of compliance with Executive Order 13166 have already proven themselves to be amply justified. Those incorrigible optimists who think translating a few documents into Spanish or Chinese will make the government happy should take note. According to the new Justice Department guidelines, if English speakers can talk to a clerk in the office, persons who speak any other language must have the same opportunity:
[A] recipient's obligation to provide meaningful opportunity is not limited to written translations. Oral communication between recipients and beneficiaries often is a necessary part of the exchange of information. Thus, a recipient that limits its language assistance to the provision of written materials may not be allowing LEP persons "effectively to be informed of or to participate in the program" in the same manner as persons who speak English. The Clinton-Gore Administration has magnanimously allowed the subject of cost to be raised as a defense. However, "claims of limited resources from large entities will need to be well-substantiated." In other words, good luck. Cost, even extravagant cost, has seldom proved a defense in civil-rights cases. The impact and cost of these new rules will not just fall on places one tends to think of as immigration centers since "programs that serve a few or even one LEP person are still subject to the . . . obligation" (emphasis added). Imagine the impact on your local government (and on your local tax bill) of designing services and policies for each of the 300+ languages spoken in our land. Given the Clinton-Gore administration's proclivity for Constitution-bending, Executive Order 13166 may seem like relatively small potatoes. But Executive Order 13166 has enshrined into law the most radical interpretation of linguistic entitlement in American history. According to America's recess-appointed civil-rights czar, Bill Lann Lee, a lack of translation services in every possible language available 24 hours per day suggests racist motives — a hate crime, if you will: [T]he failure to address language barriers may not be simply an oversight, but rather may be attributable, at least in part, to invidious discrimination on the basis of national origin and race. While there is not always a direct relationship between an individual's language and national origin, often language does serve as an identifier of national origin. The bottom line here is that to be unable or unwilling to speak English is no longer a personal problem but an entitlement to service in the language of your choice. This is an open invitation for all sorts of litigation. Of course, there has been plenty of litigation on this subject during the Clinton-Gore era. In Minnesota, a class-action lawsuit was filed last year demanding translation of welfare forms and Medicaid applications into languages other than English. The Montefiore Family Health Center in the Bronx section of New York City has come under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights for failing to have a Khmer translator on the premises when Chay Lay Tiang happened by one day. The main problem with multilingual government is that each time materials are translated into one particular language, the trend toward universal linguistic entitlement grows stronger. For once the government offers services in one language in addition to English, it has little reason to oppose further demands for providing those same services in additional languages. New Mexico confronted this problem five years ago. The state ceased giving driver's license tests in Spanish after a court ruled that if the license test was offered in any language other than English, it must be made available in every language. (A lawsuit has since been filed demanding restoration of the Spanish version of the test.) What most people do not realize is that the cost of multilingual government goes well beyond the price of extra printing and the salaries for multilingual staff members. The question of translation accuracy seldom arises. It should. If a government agency's "official" translation turns out to be wrong, what does that mean legally? Anyone who has attempted to translate materials from one language to another knows that mistakes are inevitable and important nuances can be overlooked. This question of government translation error is hardly theoretical. In 1994, the New York Times reported that in New York City election "ballots last year, the city erroneously printed the Chinese character for 'no' as a translation for 'yes.'" HUD spokeswoman Ginny Terzano resorted to blaming errant subcontractors for the agency's infamous Haitian Creole pamphlet, Rezedents Rights and Rispansabilities (signed by "Sekretary Andrew M. Cuomo fella") since "we don't translate and we don't print." Bill Clinton and Bill Lann Lee may well have seen Executive Order 13166 as an opportunity to enshrine the culture of linguistic entitlement into every nook and cranny of American life. Instead they have may have provoked a much-needed debate on language issues in the Congress and even on the campaign trail this year. Ultimately, the English Language Amendment to the Constitution (H. J. Res. 21) may well be necessary to uproot the culture of mandatory multilingualism that has spread throughout our government institutions. A nation of immigrants needs an official language. Congress, please take note. |
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of us are no longer surprised when we telephone a government agency and
get a recording which begins, "To proceed in English, press 1." Get ready
for a lot more of this sort of thing and hold onto your wallet. The Clinton-Gore
administration has just declared the United States government officially
multilingual.
