O.C.’s Congressmen Support Language Bill Unanimously

Despite the fact that some of them represent large non-English-speaking populations, Orange County’s six congressmen voted unanimously Thursday to support GOP legislation that would make English the official language of the federal government.

The Orange County lawmakers said they believed that if the federal government uses solely English in most official business, all citizens would be “encouraged” to master the language. Such a policy, they said, would establish a shared cultural bond for Americans, something they believe is threatened each time the government uses a language other than English to communicate with citizens.

“By publishing official documents in a variety of languages, the federal government undermines this important common link,” said Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside). “It is vital that we have a channel of communication common to all.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) agreed. “It’s good to nip this thing in the bud before it destroys the very fabric in the United States,” he said.

But Arturo Montez, president of the Orange County chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the GOP congressmen who pushed the bill through the House “were motivated by an agenda of polarization.” LULAC, a civil rights organization active throughout the Southwest, has been a longtime advocate of bilingual education programs.

“This comes on the heels of the so-called welfare reform passed on Wednesday. Truly, we in the United States have now become the Donner party, eating our own,” Montez said. “Congress has succeeded only at dividing the nation through both of these measures; all for politically expedient reasons.”

But Tony Lam, a Westminster councilman who is the only Vietnamese elected official in Orange County, endorsed the legislation.

“It should be mandatory,” Lam said. But he added that local and state governments should reserve the option to use other languages. “Certain programs can help [people] cope with their own language problems,” he said.

Yen Do, publisher of Nguoi Viet Daily, a Vietnamese newspaper, said that “if we could separate this problem from the movement against immigrants, it would help the cause of English. But immigrants need to get into the mainstream and I think English as an official language is important.”

According to the 1990 U.S. Census, 220,000 of Orange County’s 2.4 million residents speak English “not well” or “not at all.” A total of 575,000 county resident were foreign born.

Should it pass the Senate and become law, the measure would repeal a provision of the 21-year-old Voting Rights Act which mandates that ballots be printed in a second language in areas where there are significant non-English speaking populations. Orange County prints ballots in three languages, according to the Registrar of Voters: English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Taking to the House floor, Rohrabacher blasted opponents. He said each time the government prints a non-English document or ballot item, nonnative speakers suffer the most.

“You are not doing anyone a favor by making it easier for them to not learn English,” he said. “It is only a disservice to them.”

But Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said the bill is “based ‘on the false premise that there are people here who refuse to learn English.”

Kennedy said supporters of the bill need only “look at the incredibly long lines of people who go to our community colleges and adult education centers to enroll in English classes.

“The fact is that most immigrants in our community see the study and mastery of English as the primary avenue for them and their children to enter into the mainstream.”

In an interview, U.S. Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar) noted that “as a legal immigrant, I came to this country with my own language, Korean, but I studied and learned the English language in order to further myself as a U.S. citizen. We as a nation need to have a central functional identity in the English language.”

David Phinney, who reported from Washington, works for States News Service. H.G. Reza, who reported from Orange County, is a Times staff writer.