Congress is leaving for vacation at the end of this week, but before they go, the House Republicans are considering legislation to make English the official language of the United States. And to support their cause, they've invited witnesses with clear ties to white nationalists to testify.
A Republican witness at today’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on legislation making English the official language of the United States is from an organization with ties to racism.
Dr. Rosalie Porter, chairwoman of the board of ProEnglish, is testifying in support of the “English Language Unity Act of 2011” before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution on Thursday morning.
ProEnglish is headed by executive director Robert Vandervoort, who came under fire for hosting a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year featuring Peter Brimelow of the website VDARE, an organization labeled as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The panel also featured a speech from then-National Review editor John Derbyshire, who would later be fired from the magazine for writing a racist article in the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
Declaring English to be the official language of the U.S. would mean government funded programs and agencies would no longer translate documents into other languages. This includes voter-registration forms and ballots.
Considering this, it's easy to discern what their motives are.
And who is the sponsor of the English-only bill? Everyone's favorite wingnut Steve King.