Statement of Senator Inhofe on his "English first" amendment, Congressional Record, pages S6423 to S6424 (May 22, 2007)

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I thank the Senator very much for the time.

Madam President, before getting into this bill, I want to comment that last week when I was there--it was my 14th time to be in the AOR of the Middle East and where the conflict is--the progress that is being made there is incredible. I sat here and I heard a couple Senators talk about how bad things were there and that we are losing and all this.

This is the first time--I remember a year ago in Ramadi they actually declared Ramadi was going to be the al-Qaida capital of the Middle East or the terrorist capital of the Middle East. Right now, it is completely changed. IEDs are down 81 percent. Attacks are down 74 percent. Then, next door at Fallujah, they are now totally under the security of the Iraqi security forces.

So all these good things are happening there. I wish Members of this Senate would go over there and see for themselves instead of trying to use it politically to advance their careers. You are doing a great disservice to our troops over there.

But that is not why I am here in the Chamber.

I appreciate the comments that have been made by the Senator from Alabama. I agree with everything he has said. My concern is at 2 a.m. on Saturday morning is when all this came up. We did not have any way of knowing exactly what was in it. Yet I am concerned about all sorts of things, such as how do you make a Z visa work.

But the reason I want to have a little time right now is because I do have an amendment. It is my understanding I will be able to call up this amendment for consideration after the Senator from North Dakota has his up, and that will be later this afternoon.

My amendment is the English amendment. Those Members on the floor can remember a year ago I got an amendment adopted that made English the national language for the United States of America. It passed by a vote of 62 to 35. There are some extremist groups that opposed it and, quite frankly, some of the liberal Members of the Senate were afraid to vote for it without having a backup where they could negate it. This is what happened. They voted for my amendment.

The amendment is very simple. It says there is not an entitlement for language, other than the English language, to be given to people who want Government services. Very simple. That is the same way over 50 other countries, including Ghana in West Africa, have it.

The Presiding Officer knows I have spent a lot of time in Africa on some of the same programs she has been involved with, and most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa--the ones that speak English--all have English as their national language. Thirty states have it as their national language, but not we in the United States of America.

There is going to be an effort on my part to get this in the bill, and I am going to use the same text I had last time.

It is interesting when you hear different Presidents talk about this issue. In 1999, in his State of the Union Address, President Clinton said:

Our new immigrants must be part of our one America ..... that means learning English.

Everyone said ``hooray,'' and then he came along with an executive order right after that which did away with that statement completely.

President Bush said:

The key to unlocking the full promise of America is the ability to speak English.

We know how many States have adopted this. The polling is incredible. A 2006 Zogby poll reported 84 percent of Americans--I have polls showing up to 91 percent--said English should be the national language. And 77 percent of Hispanics polled by that Zogby poll said the same thing. This poll was in 2006, only a year ago, demonstrating how many Americans believe English should be our national language. Establishing English as a national language should not be viewed as a partisan issue. It is widely supported throughout the country.

In this Congress, in this immigration debate, I am again offering my amendment to make English the national language. My amendment would accomplish three things. No. 1, it would establish English as the national language of the United States of America. No. 2, it would establish that the official business of the Federal Government should be conducted in English, and eliminates all of the entitlements people would have for language other than English.

Now, it does respect current law. For example, we have the Court Interpreters Act. The Court Interpreters Act is necessary to support the sixth amendment, the right to counsel, and we are making sure this doesn't affect that in a negative way.

So we create no restriction of providing materials of other languages and allow certain exceptions where it is specifically mandated by statute. We made that very clear.

My amendment does not prohibit the use of other languages. However, my amendment states:

There is no entitlement to individuals that Federal agencies must act, communicate, perform, or provide services or materials in any language other than English.

So it is hypocritical that the immigration legislation we are considering now contains a section generally recognizing the importance of English. However, this section 702 of this immigration legislation does not establish English as a national language.

Now, we had this debate. We were on the Senate floor and debating this about a year ago right now, and people were hesitant to vote against it. We had every kind of excuse in the world. They came trotting in here with State flags that had foreign languages on them saying: We would have to do away with all of these State flags.

It has nothing to do with that. We are talking about entitlements.

We had one Member come in and say: You are going to be responsible for the deaths of Hispanics.

I said: Explain that.

This Member on the Senate floor, right down here, said: Well, you know, they have some bad currents down in

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the Potomac, and we have ``no swimming'' signs that are written in Spanish. If you don't have those, then people are going to drown.

This has nothing to do with that. You can put up any kind of sign you want that is in the best public interest.

We had one Member come down and say: You would never be able to speak in Spanish on the floor of the Senate.

Well, that has nothing to do with it. I have made a few speeches in Spanish, and there is a reason for it which I will not go into now. But these are things that people say are problems and things that just don't hold up.

Now, I think it should be pointed out--because a very good friend of mine was on a television station this morning, and I know this individual would not have said what he said if he were aware of the truth, but let me just bring this out. A year ago, when I had my amendment, which would do essentially what the amendment will do if it is passed today, Senator Salazar from Colorado came up with an amendment right afterwards. In fact, we voted on it in a matter of minutes after we voted on mine, 62 to 35, and his passed also. All his did was offer language that is totally different from mine.

For example, I am going to read his. It didn't say English is the national language, it says it is a common language.

Preserving and Enhancing the Role of the English Language: The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the language of the United States.

But listen to this:

Nothing herein shall diminish or expand any existing rights under the laws of the United States relevant to services or materials provided by the Government of the United States in any language other than English.

There it is, folks: ``Nothing herein shall diminish or expand .....'' In other words, it is going to continue to be the same.

Now, there are a lot of people out there who are going to be looking at this amendment. Americans are clamoring to have this done. They don't understand why we don't do this. I don't understand it either. But this language is found in the current immigration bill.

Down here under ``definition'' in section 702, which was in the language that was put in 2 minutes after my vote took place a year ago, it says:

For the purposes of this section, law is defined as including provisions of the United States Constitution, the United States Code, controlling judicial decisions, regulations, and Presidential Executive Orders.

Now, this is a very significant one because what you hear about quite often is President Clinton's Executive Order No. 13166 entitlement, which offers entitlement to translation in any language of your choice, anyone who receives any Federal funds. Well, that completely opens the door for every possible language. A lot of people think we are only talking about Spanish. That is not correct. That Executive order refers to any language at all. This bill we are considering that I will oppose has language in there that would codify that Executive Order No. 13166, and I think it is one that people have to understand.

The Senator from Alabama is not back, so I will take a little bit more time. I am going to read the language now

that is actually in the amendment which says English shall be the national language of the Government of the United States: The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America, unless specifically provided by statute.

Now, I use as an example the court interpreters law, existing law right now. It says, unless specifically provided by statute, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform, or provide services or provide materials in any language other than English. If an exception is made with respect to the use of a language other than English, the exception does not create a legal entitlement to additional services in that language or in any language other than English.

Forms--it says:

If any form is issued by the Federal Government in any language other than English, or such form is completed in a language other than English, the English language version of the form is the sole authority for all legal purposes.

Again, there is one sentence in there that says:

Nothing in this chapter shall prohibit the use of language other than English if it is codified into law.

That is what we use the Court Interpreters Act for, and a few others, where there is a constitutional reason--in this case it is the sixth amendment to the Constitution--for having that language in there.

So what I will do until the Senator from Alabama returns is mention a few other things I think are significant. This is not a new issue. This is an old issue, and the old issue goes back to many years ago, to President Theodore Roosevelt in the 1900s:

Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn English, but that he has got to learn it. He has got to consider the interests of the United States or he should not stay here. He must be made to see that his opportunities in this country depend on his knowing English and observing American standards. The employer cannot be permitted to regard him only as an industrial asset.

Now, that was President Theodore Roosevelt in 1916. I could go through--we have them all the way up, including Ronald Reagan and other Presidents. Later on, I will go over the polling data. Later on, if we have a chance to present this and debate this amendment, I am going to go over all the polling data. You cannot find any polling data that says less than 84 percent of the American people want to have English as the national language.

So even LaRaza, an extremist, leftwing group, says they found in a 2004 poll that LaRaza did, 97 percent strongly--86 percent--97 percent that is strongly or somewhat agreed that the ability to speak English is important to succeed in this country. That is the extremist group. In other words, if you want to be an attorney or a doctor instead of a busboy, you need to learn the language.

Now, I see the Senator from Alabama is back, but let me just repeat the one thing that I think is very important because so many of our own Members--Republicans and Democrats--believe somehow this bill positively addresses the problem or it makes English the national language. I am going to go ahead and tell you that when they put section 702 in instead of my language, section 701, all they said is English is a common language in the United States. Big deal. But it says in here:

Nothing herein shall diminish or expand any existing rights under the laws of the United States relative to services or materials provided by the Government of the United States in any language other than English.

Well, there it is, I say to my friend from Alabama. Nothing in here would diminish or expand. In other words, it is going to stay like it is today. But then it goes on to say--and this is the critical thing--all the criticism of President Clinton when he passed Executive Order No. 13166, which was an entitlement for a translator in any language you want other than English, or the language of your choice if you are a recipient of Federal funds. So that definition, if we pass this bill--which I don't think we are going to, and which I don't want to for many other reasons--but if we pass it, we would say for the purposes of this section of law, the law is defined as including provisions of the U.S. Constitution, the United States Code, controlling judicial decisions, regulation, and Presidential Executive orders. In other words, we are codifying this very Executive Order that so many people in America find so offensive.

So I think this is an opportunity to put this in. Quite frankly, I think unless the bill would be dramatically changed, I still wouldn't support the bill, but we need to have every opportunity we can, when we are addressing problems with immigrants or legislation of this nature, to make English the national language. Ninety percent of the American people are for it, 77 percent of the Hispanics are for it, and I am for it.

I thank my colleague very much for his time, I say to the Senator from Alabama, who has done a great job.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.