Jon Christian Ryter -- Whose Fault is the Language Barrier?

WHOSE FAULT IS THE LANGUAGE BARRIER?
PART 2 of 2

By Jon Christian Ryter

August 2, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

On August 11, 2000 as he was flying to the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles which nominated Al Gore, Jr., former President Bill Clinton signed that engraved invitation�Executive Order 13166. According to the Department of Justice's Office of Civil Rights at the time, EO 13166 requires any recipient of federal funds to take "reasonable steps" to provide access to services to persons with limited English proficiency by providing instructions in their native language, and on-staff interpreters whenever needed. The Executive Order, "Improving Access to Services For Persons With Limited English Proficiency" required federal agencies to examine the services they provided, identify needed services not provided, and implement a plan to provide those services. Among those "needed services," are bridging the language barrier�a problem magnified by Bill Clinton's alien amnesty in 1996 when the Clinton Administration fast-tracked 5 million resident aliens�many of whom were illegals�to citizenship by waiving a 100-year old federal requirement that mandates that those applying for citizenship must be reasonably fluent in England and allowing non-English speaking applicants take their citizenship exams in their native languages.

The Clintons decided that Americans must bridge the language barrier not by forcing those who want to live here to learn how to communicate with other Americans in English, but by forcing employers to either hire supervisors who are fluent in the languages that their employees speak since the bureaucracy decided that it was a form of discrimination not to hire a person simply because he or she does not speak, or understand, English. Without an legislative debate by those we elect, and without a basis in law, the Clintons made the inability to speak fluent English a protected civil right in the United States. The President of the United States does not have the constitutional right to "legislate." He cannot create law. Any president�Democrat or Republican�who attempts to create social policy by fiat needs to be impeached. And any judge sitting on any court in the land who fails to abrogate presidential excursions into legislative or judicial terrain needs to be impeached. And, State or federal legislators who fail to act in the best interests of the citizens need to be recalled and removed from office.

When Clinton signed EO 13166, it didn't matter that the newly-hired non-English speaking person who may have to interact daily with English-only speaking consumers�and therefore could not perform even the most basic rudiments of the job he or she was being hired to perform�the employer was nevertheless required to hire them since the bureaucracy viewed their language "impairment" as a covered handicap under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. When Clinton promulgated illegal law with EO 13166�an unofficial UN policy for a multilingual United States�several Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle denounced the Executive Order as they had hundreds of other EOs whenever Clinton ignored the constitutional provisions of lawmaking and abused the presidency by going over the heads of Congress to illegally create unpopular laws by fiat that could never have been successfully legislated by Congress. In a July, 1998 interview with the Los Angeles Times, former Clinton policy adviser Paul Begala commented: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool." I think that's called dictatorship. And, it isn't cool. It's frightening.

Clinton Administration recess-appointed Assistant Attorney General and civil rights czar Bill Lann Lee noted that a lack of translation services (for any of the 101 languages and dialects spoken in various parts of the United States by minority-minorities) could be construed as a hate crime. A statement from Lee's office at the time confirmed that "...the 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...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."

During the Clinton-Gore years, lawyers lined up to file language barrier discrimination lawsuits and federal discrimination complaints for non-English speaking residents and newly-sworn citizens. One such complaint filed against the Montefiore Family Health Center with DHHS in 1999�a year before EO 13166�argued that the Bronx quick-care health facility discriminated against Chay Lay Tiang because they did not have a Khmer translator on the premise when he unexpectedly showed up for treatment. In 1995 the State of New Mexico stopped giving drivers' license tests in Spanish because a State court ruled if the license test is provided in any language other than English, it must be made available in every language spoken anywhere in the country. The federal government printing office now prints every government instruction form in 101 languages and dialects.

Today, when you call any bank or financial institution, public utility, or government agency, we hear a prompt that says, "...to continue in English, press one." We are now officially a bilingual nation. But it should be incumbent upon the new arrivals to the greatest nation Earth to learn how to communicate with their new neighbors, not the English speaking citizens to be forced to endure the cost of providing multilingual translators in every business, healthcare facility and/or public utility or government office in the country since the cost has been staggering�and it has been funded 100% by the customers and/or taxpayers who do not require foreign language services.

I have no inherent right to expect translators would be available for my use if I opted to move to a foreign country that speaks a language in which I am not proficient. That comes under the heading of "my problem." While it may sound uncaring�even unchristian�and perhaps even callous, it's a reality in the real world. If you decide to live in another country, have the courtesy to learn the language before you sneak across the border or apply for a resident visa.

The "language barrier" is not a disability. While those who can't communicate are, of course, handcapped in our society. But the inability to speak English is not a "handicap" in the physiological sense. It is tragic, but expected, that people who are not proficient in the English language are misunderstood when they go to free clinics or hospital emergency rooms and attempt to explain their symptoms of their illnesses, or can't understand the doctors and/or medical personnel who are attempting to help them. But, whether the foreign national is here legally or illegally, it's their fault. It's not like they were brought to the United States against their will. And, it's not that resident alien adults were refused permission to learn English�even though their children, in our public school system, may have been. Policies established by the Clinton Department of Education�and not changed by the Bush-43 Department of Education�require that alien children be taught in their native language in order to "protect" their cultural diversity. The cultural diversity that ultimately collapsed the Soviet Union is alive and well in the educational facilities of the American public school system.

Clearly monolingual businesses in a multilingual society are at an economic disadvantage�as is the quality of care in monolingual healthcare facilities in bilingual or multilingual communities are . Unfortunately the language barrier can be as impenetrable as a brick wall. Something has to be done�particularly in hospitals where clear and precise communication is needed to treat patients and save lives. But declaring the language barrier to be a legal "handicap" instead of learning laziness is an example of the stupidity of a government bureaucracy that believes tax dollars can solve every ill of mankind if enough tax dollars are taken from the pockets of the American wage-earner. Punishing the American taxpayer because those who steal into our country in the middle of the night can't speak our language isn't a solution, it compounds the problem and assures that the illegal aliens in our midst will never be assimilated into the fabric of our society since it is like trying to cross weave burlap and silk. The first American flag was woven from homespun. America is a homespun country made up of immigrants. However, the immigrants that were woven into the fabric of a nation in the late 19th and early 20th century wanted to invest their sweat equity in nation-building because they knew their dream was part of the American dream.

As American transnationalists export US jobs to Mexico, radical Hispanics�encouraged by the Mexican government that does not want to deal with them�are exporting poverty to the American Southwest. The majority of the illegals entering the country through our porous Southern borders are not nation builders. They are thieves, murderers, drug runners, and other serious criminal types�the dregs and cast coffees of the impoverished northern Mexican border society. In fairness it must be noted that many of those who enter the nation illegally first tried to gain legal entry into the United States and failed. They are honest, hardworking men and women who want nothing more than to capture the gold ring and, with it, a thin slice of the American dream.

But, just as many of them are radical zealots who bring a dangerous agenda with them. The most radical of these is La Raza. La Raza�Spanish for "the race," is a transnational secessionist group who, according to the propaganda of the Hispanic magazine, La Voz de Aztlan, see themselves as "American Palestinians" whose land was stolen and absorbed into the United States. Their advocacy is to break those States away from the United States and return them to Mexico. They believe they can achieve their goal in two or three decades simply by becoming the majority and voting themselves out of the Union. If they fail in their legal efforts, they will resort to open warfare�much like the Palestinians fighting the Jews in Israel to gain a homeland.

The dream of the multicultural, multilingual socialists within the American bureaucracy is to see a nation�and a world�without borders. Utopians like Hillary Rodham Clinton envision a world that is neither black nor white, or yellow or brown. The globalists have aligned with radical groups like LaRaza who appear, at least on the surface, to have an agenda that dovetails with their own. In point of fact, LaRaza is a separatist organization that does not want Hispanic immigrants�legal or illegal�assimilated into the American culture because LaRaza needs them to remain a subculture on the outer fringes of the American society. Separatist organizations like LaRaza were instrumental in convincing the bureaucracy that Hispanics should not be taught English and since it suited the agenda of the globalists to drive a wedge through the patriotic heart of the Republic by fractionalizing the various peoples within the nation, the separatists found an ally in the bureaucracy.

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The solution to the language barrier in the minds of the utopians has nothing to do with requiring non-English speaking aliens to learn our language as a prerequisite of citizenship. Rather, it deals with throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into the language cauldron in order to provide thousands of translators and to print every federal and/or State government instruction pamphlet or form in upwards of 101 different languages and dialect at the expense of a two hundred year generational immigrant population that came from their native lands, learned the language and became part of the seam of America. Tragically, the radical elitists who control the majority of the Hispanic population in the United States, and the globalists within the bureaucracy, are trying hard to unravel that seam and tear apart the fabric of our society. Sadly, they will succeed. For part one click below.

Click here for part -----> 1