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Grijalva Leads on English as a Second Language

November 17, 2007, Washington, DC

Thursday, November 15--PDA advisory board member Rep. Raul Grijalva delivered the following comments to his colleagues in the House:

“I rise again today, to once again bring a sense of reality and a clear light to the immigrant and Latino communities of our nation.

“Six months ago, my family and I went to the wake of a 19-year-old soldier [from my hometown of Tucson, Arizona] who died in Iraq.

“It was very difficult, especially when his mother asked me to tell her why he died. I should say she spoke only Spanish.

“I said what I could about freedom, sacrifice and liberty. But now this congress wants to change legislation to have the Equal Opportunity Commission not investigate or prosecute cases of discrimination if the complainant doesn't speak English, like this young man's mother.

“She gave this nation a son. I challenge--no, I demand of those proponents that want to have second-class citizenship in this country to go to that mother and tell her why.”

The EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to protect employees from discrimination in its myriad forms. Rather than punish non-English speaking families, Grijalva is pursuing legislation to help them learn the language.

In March, Grijalva introduced H.R. 1794, The Families Learning and Understanding English Together (FLUEnT) Act of 2007. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Education to make grants to providers of family literacy services to improve the literacy and English skills of limited English proficient individuals who are parents or children in families where each parent is at least 16 years old and where at least one child is under age eight.

It directs the Secretary to reserve certain funds to: (1) provide technical assistance and training to such grantees; (2) make grants to, or enter contracts with, national organizations that have family literacy service expertise to provide grantees with technical assistance and training; and (3) evaluate and improve such grant program. It requires grantees to meet specified outcome measures.

Consider these facts:

• 17.9% of US households speak a language other than English at home (US Census Bureau 2002).
• 45% of all newly-enrolled Even Start parents are learning English as a second language (http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/evenstartthird/toc.html).
• Nearly half of all US workforce growth--more than eight million working-age adults in the United States--do not speak English well or at all (U.S. Census Bureau 2002).

Studies show that adults enrolled in Family Literacy programs keep jobs, stay off welfare, and break the underachievement cycle. HR 1794 is a means to this end and creates a $50 million federal to local competitive grant program to support family literacy programs in communities serving high numbers of non-English speaking families.