Thread: Illegal immigration critics muddy Voting Rights Act renewal

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=5140499&nav=HMO6HMaW

Illegal immigration critics muddy Voting Rights Act renewal

July 12, 2006, 08:43 AM

A conservative backlash to the massive street demonstrations over illegal immigration is aggravating plans to renew the landmark Voting Rights Act before the fall elections.

After Latinos came out in greater force than they have in decades to protest a House-passed illegal-immigration bill, conservatives persuaded Republican leaders not to force a vote last month to extend the law that requires bilingual ballots in precincts with large non-English-speaking populations.

As part of its immigration debate earlier this year, the Senate voted to make English the official national language. That effort has flowed into Voting Rights Act deliberations, even though the law applies only to American citizens.

Opponents say renewing the requirement to provide election assistance in other languages discourages people from learning English and is unconstitutional.

Linda Chavez, president of One Nation Indivisible, a conservative think tank that promotes assimilation of immigrants, said language assistance was made part of the law three decades ago as a "power play" by civil rights groups who wanted Hispanics to have a piece of the action.

"The idea that this is some racist plot over the right to vote is just ludicrous," Chavez said, contending that help for non-English-speaking voters was intended to be temporary in the first place.

Now back from their July 4 recess, House leaders want to try again to extend the 1965 law that eliminated anti-black voting practices and, through later amendments, practices that also discriminated against other minority groups.

They planned a possible vote for Thursday, but prospects of it occurring were dim.

"I want to finish this bill this week," House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday. "But to tell you honestly that everything has been resolved and everyone is happy would not be the truth."

Immigration and civil rights groups and lawmakers who support them are mobilized for a fight over what they see as the latest in a long history of attempts to undercut burgeoning political influence of racial minorities.

"The historical record suggests that when minority communities are in a position to exercise political power, efforts to limit that exercise of power follow," said Debo Adegbile, associate director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Since 1975, the Voting Rights Act has required ballots and other election assistance in languages other than English in jurisdictions where at least 5 percent of voting-age citizens are not proficient in English and literacy rates are below the national average.

Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said he is puzzled that after 30 years, with no vociferous outcry from communities, there is suddenly an effort to strip out the act's language requirements.

"It smacks of an effort to impose a 21st-century literacy test," Morial said.

Some Republicans also have pushed for changes that require nine states -- Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia -- to get "pre-clearance" from the Justice Department before making any voting or election changes.

Civil rights activists see a recurring pattern. The post-Civil War era of Reconstruction brought for newly freed blacks a chance to vote, own land, get an education and participate in the political process. But Democrats in many states passed Jim Crow laws segregating public places and denying ballots to blacks through literacy tests and poll taxes until passage of the 1965 law.

What followed its enactment were new efforts to weaken or dilute the effect of minority voters through redistricting and new voter registration rules, said the NAACP legal defense fund's Adegbile. "This is well-trodden ground," he said.

I for one am English only. I don't object to someone helping someone read the instructions. There are many elderly that need assistance to vote. But they bring a family member or something. There are still many who can't read and I don't mind if they have assistance. But there's a limit when we are spending tax dollars for all languages to be printed and there comes a time when some of this "helpless" attitude has to fall on the shoulders of those who insist on staying "helpless". Let their special intrest groups volunteer their time to assist those that need assisting.