In spring 2006, the people of United States witnessed the birth of a new mass immigrant rights movement. Millions of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets throughout March and April against racist and discriminatory bills being discussed in Congress that would criminalize many immigrant families. The movement culminated in a massive one-day strike on May 1 that swept major cities and small towns alike across the country.
 English-only laws aim to deny immigrants political rights and social benefits. Photo: Notimex/Juan Vignoles |
While millions were in the streets fighting for their rights, racists and reactionaries were hard at work trying to destroy the movement. A number of local and state governments, as well as businesses, have begun to find new ways of discriminating against immigrants.
For example, the Board of Commissioners in Gwinnett County, Ga., just northeast of Atlanta, passed an ordinance banning mobile taco stands. The board stated that taco stands were “cluttering street corners,” while a Gwinnett County politician called the rolling taco stands “gypsyfication”—an offense to Latino and Roma peoples at once.
Gwinnett has the largest population of Latinos in Georgia.
In Butler County, Ohio, a sheriff put up a yellow sign saying, “illegal aliens here”—with an arrow pointing to the county jail.
In Philadelphia, Pa., the owner of a well-known sandwich shop put up a sign saying, “This is America. When ordering, speak English.”
The mayor of Hazleton, Pa., signed a law on July 21 that punishes landlords for renting to undocumented immigrants and mandates that all official city business be conducted in English. The law was signed after Hazleton’s Latino population jumped from 5 percent to nearly 30 percent since 2000.
The Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU and other groups sued the city of Hazelton on Aug. 16, saying the new ordinances were discriminatory.
A key strategy the anti-immigration movement resorts to is pushing English-only ordinances and policies as a way of dividing U.S.-born workers from immigrants—especially Spanish-speaking immigrants. These are supported by groups that belong to what is known as the “English-only movement” or the “official English movement.”
Racists and xenophobes behind the ‘movement’
The English-only movement refers to a political movement for establishing English as the only official language in the United States. Among the leading English-only groups that are regularly interviewed in the mainstream media and called on to testify at Congress are the U.S. English Foundation and ProEnglish.
On its website, the U.S. English Foundation states that its first mission is “to help improve the teaching of English to immigrants, to allow them to enjoy the economic opportunities available in this country.” The Foundation offers a database of English as Second Language for anyone who would “like to volunteer to help people learn English.”
ProEnglish lobbies against multilingual and bilingual laws, and boasts of specializing in “providing pro-bono legal assistance to public and private agencies facing litigation or regulatory actions over language.” California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a current member of ProEnglish.
But what are these organizations? How are they linked?
Both were founded by Dr. John Tanton and are funded by U.S. English Inc., another Tanton creation. That group has an annual budget of $7 million, claims to have 1.8 million members and proclaims itself “the nation’s oldest, largest citizen’s action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.”
Tanton has a long racist record. In a 1988 memo written to his collaborators, Tanton asked, “As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night?”
He raised questions about the “educability” of Latino people, and questioned whether “Latin American migrants will bring with them the tradition of the mordida (bribe).” He referred to Latin Americans as people “with greater reproductive powers.”
Tanton arrived at the English-only movement through his anti-immigration lobbying efforts. In 1979, he founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an immigration reduction and border security group, on whose board of directors he still sits. FAIR was a leading member of the 2004 “Protect Arizona Now” campaign, which cut essential services to undocumented immigrants.
Imposing the English language
 For many, bilingual services are essential to accessible healthcare. Photo: Ciro Cesar/La Opinion |
Ruling classes have long recognized the importance of stripping the oppressed of their cultural forms as part of their subjugation.
African slaves were given English names and forbidden from communicating in their native tongues.
In the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848, the United States conquered parts of Colorado and Wyoming, as well as the whole of Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada and Utah. Right after the war, California recognized Spanish language rights. But 30 years later, the constitution was rewritten to state “all laws of the state” as well as “all official writings” and “judicial proceedings shall be conducted, preserved and published in no other than the English language.”
After the Spanish-American war in which the United States replaced Spain as the colonial power, English was declared as the “official language of the school room in Puerto Rico” and the official language in the Philippines.
There are numerous examples in U.S. history of the government using nativist language policies to garner support for its broader political agenda. During World War I, the United States initiated a widespread campaign against the use of the German language as part of the pro-war patriotic hysteria. The campaign called for the removal of German-language books from libraries.
English-only laws and immigrant workers
The immigrant population makes up a large section of the U.S. working class. Immigrants often fill the hardest, lowest-paid jobs, working as farmer laborers, in restaurant kitchens or as domestic workers. Immigrants already face limited job and education opportunities, frequent police harassment and intimidation—regardless of their legal status—and daily episodes of racism.
 An October 2000 protest against an Arizona attempt to ban nilingual education. Photo: Jack Kurtz |
Now, in the 25 states that have passed English-only laws, immigrants have the additional challenge of filling out paperwork and communicating with court officials in a language in which they may not be conversant.
Currently, the U.S. federal government has not specified an official language. Yet, 25 states have already made English the official language. States such as Alabama, Florida, Massachusetts and Georgia have deemed English as the only official language. Hawaii, Louisiana and New Mexico are officially bilingual, using Hawaiian, French and Spanish respectively.
The English-only movement is a threat to civil rights, educational opportunities and free speech. It also impedes the development of legislative, administrative and judicial reforms that protect language minorities. A national English-only provision would prevent those unable to speak English from defending themselves in court.
With government-run social services, non-English speaking immigrants will be denied the right to question, and ultimately understand, the services and policies that affect their daily lives.
Defend and expand language rights!
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed because the masses took to the streets against Jim Crow. The immigrant rights movement followed on the path of the Civil Rights movement. In 1975, the provisions of the Voting Rights Act were broadened to address voting discrimination against members of “language minority groups.”
Now, there is a coordinated attack to deny democratic rights to immigrants and to the growing Latino community in particular. The progressive reforms won through the Civil Rights movement are under attack. Only the continued mobilization of millions can defend the rights we have won and fight for a comprehensive reform that gives equal rights to Spanish-speaking communities.
During the debates leading up to the extension of the Voting Rights Act, 80 House Republicans signed a letter stating, “the multilingual ballot mandate encourages the linguistic division of our nation and contradicts the melting pot ideal that has made us the most successful multiethnic nation on earth.”
The English-only movement and their politicians claim to be working for equality and unity. But their movement is a recipe for division. It is pure chauvinism. No peoples can live together on terms of equal respect and understanding if that “unity” is achieved through the privileging of one language and the obliteration of the other. As both Switzerland and Belgium have shown, multilingual states are both possible and practical.
Socialists and communists have always fought for language rights for national minorities. In the face of Tsarist Russia’s early 20th century policy of “Russification” to wipe out minority languages within its borders, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin made the fight against a compulsory Russian language a central part of its platform against national oppression.
Regardless of their native tongue, U.S. workers are united by their common exploited position in society and their common enemy, the class of super-rich corporate owners and bankers. Recognizing the right of each community to speak in their language of choice, without fear of repression or discrimination, is an essential step to building class-wide solidarity among the multinational U.S. working class.
Already, the slogans of “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido” and “the people united will never be defeated” are becoming recognized as joint slogans of the new workers’ movement.
