English now a bipartisan priority in Kansas

August 16, 2006

Kansas’ Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her Republican challenger Jim Barnett now agree that Kansas should make English its official language.

Challenger Barnett, the more vocal of the two on the issue, addressed it during his successful campaign for the GOP nomination. Sebelius addressed the issue once reporters asked her about it.

The national debate over illegal immigration, particularly from Mexico, may put the issue on the state's political agenda.

'I think language serves as a lighting rod for tensions that we're experiencing with immigration,' said James Crawford, a Maryland writer and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Language and Education Policy.

Since 1986, Kansas legislators have introduced 10 proposals to designate English as either the state's official or 'common' language, and some would have required public meetings and public documents to be in English. Only one, in 1996, emerged from committee in the Senate, but the chamber never voted upon it.

Such proposals have been successful in other states. Twenty-six now designate English as their only official language, the most recent being Iowa in 2002. Hawaii's constitution designates both English and Native Hawaiian.

Tim Schultz, a spokesman for U.S. English Inc., a group advocating official-language status for English since the 1980s, said such policies promote the assimilation of new immigrants.

'The trip wire for assimilation is language,' he said. 'That's why this issue resonates.'

Barnett said immigration-related issues weigh heavily on voters' minds.

He's repeatedly criticized Sebelius for supporting a 2004 law that allows some illegal immigrants in Kansas to pay the same, lower tuition rates as legal Kansas residents at state universities and colleges.

And he's attacked her over her 2003 endorsement of an unsuccessful legislative proposal to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

'With the significant amount of illegal immigration we have in our state, Kansans are concerned that English is becoming a second language,' Barnett said.

Crawford questioned whether such a scenario is possible, even though the state's Hispanic population doubled between 1990 and 2000, according to the U.S. census.

He said studies show immigrants are learning English more quickly than they have in the past. While the Census Bureau has estimated that about 9 percent of Kansans aged 5 or older don't speak English at home, less than 1 percent speak English 'not at all.'

Crawford said such policies encourage 'language vigilanteism,' in which government or business employees discriminate against people who speak English poorly. He said many supporters' goal is to roll back government help for people with limited English skills.

In Emporia, where the Tyson Foods Inc. meatpacking plant has drawn workers from Somalia, Cambodia and Guatemala over the last 20 years, Deputy Police Chief Michael Williams said his department could not function if officers couldn't communicate with residents in languages other than English.

Barnett advocates a 'common sense' approach in which English is recognized as the state's official language and remains the language of government, while still allowing ballots in other languages and translators in the legal and health care systems.

Schultz said talk of such policies leading to discrimination - or allowing government officials to deny social services, for example - are unfounded.

And he said immigrants who speak languages less common than, for example, Spanish, often have to learn English quickly anyway, because no translators are available for them.