9/06/00 11:25 a.m.
Life in Language-Rights Land
NYC and Albuquerque show how far America has fallen.

By Jim Boulet Jr., Executive Director English First

wo newspaper articles that appeared on August 26, one in New York City and one in Albuquerque, N.M., combine to underscore an ominous trend in American society. The dangerous notion of linguistic entitlement is much farther advanced than most people think.

In New York City, 12.1 percent of the students who were required to attend summer school this year never showed up. The New York Times headlined an article on this act of educational indifference, "English-Only Notification Blamed for Low Summer School Turnout."

You see, according to the ostensibly pro-immigrant group, Advocates for Children, these children had a good excuse: Eighty-five percent of their parents received a notification letter written in — horrors — English alone.

Now, as the fellow who called this to my attention noted: "A letter arrives at your home with the school's address on it, and a loving parent just pitches it into the trash because it is written in English?"

The solution for this problem is not quite as obvious as Advocates for the Children might think. According to a report by the Council for Great City Schools (an impeccably liberal outfit), 115 tongues were spoken in New York's schools in 1992. How is any school system to address parents in 115 or more separate languages?

One imagines one-page school notices transformed into bound catalogues dropped on the family doorstep. And even then, somebody will complain of a lack of inclusion because some obscure dialect was omitted.

Once again, we are reminded that today's "immigrant-rights groups" are known for their anti-assimilation and anti-English agendas. It was not always so. The League of United American Citizens (LULAC) is today known as an opponent of official English and a dedicated supporter of statehood for Spanish-only Puerto Rico. Yet LULAC's original constitution stated that English was the organization's official language and required that all members teach their children to speak English in order to "foster the acquisition and facile use of the official language of our country that we may thereby equip ourselves and our families for the fullest enjoyment of our rights and privileges and the efficient discharge of our duties and obligations to this, our country."

Of course, even if immigrant-rights groups like the Alliance for Children and LULAC once again encouraged English assimilation, we would still have another problem to contend with: Some of the people most militantly devoted to the notion of linguistic entitlement for every tongue (save English) are employed by the government.

Picture a social worker claiming a right to conduct an official interview in Spanish even if the citizen being interrogated asks to be addressed in English. That is precisely what happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

A meeting between a social worker from New Mexico's Children's Protective Service and Adela Martinez led to Mrs. Martinez losing custody of her three-year-old daughter, Anamarie. The alarming thing about that meeting, according to the Albuquerque News Journal, was that despite Mrs. Martinez's request that the social worker speak English, this crucial meeting was conducted almost entirely in Spanish. Why? According to Mrs. Martinez, the social worker stated "she was more comfortable in Spanish." So Mrs. Martinez found herself mentally translating as best she could and then answering in English.

One might rightfully inquire precisely how someone who is uncomfortable speaking English came to hold a government job in the first place. The answer is likely to be that this social worker was hired precisely because she spoke Spanish fluently and no one bothered to inquire into her English skills.

Given events like these, President Clinton's Executive Order 13166, which mandates multilingualism in all federally-funded programs, was truly the culmination of an agenda. There are people who think that the notion of a nation of immigrants united by a common tongue is a hopeless anachronism. They seem to think it will be a great day when all government offices and school-administration agencies are subdivided into linguistic enclaves. For them, that will be a dream come true. For the rest of us, it will be a nightmare.