AJSOCAL strongly opposes President Trump’s executive order (EO), establishing English as the official language of the U.S. and stripping protections away from limited English proficient (LEP) communities.
President Trump’s executive order presents a threat to our state. Nearly half of all Californians and the majority (66%) of Asian Americans speak a language other than English at home. The most commonly spoken languages in California after English are Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean. These five languages alone are spoken by more than 13 million people in our state.
Connie Chung Joe, AJSOCAL, CEO states,
“This is a blatantly racist move aimed at further isolating and harming immigrant communities. We stand committed to fighting back against these attacks on our communities and will continue advocating for the rights and dignity of all individuals.
For the past 25 years, California has led the way with one of the country’s most progressive language accessibility requirements — achievements made possible by the relentless advocacy and work of numerous organizations like AJSOCAL. However, this was not always the case.
In 1986, California enacted Prop 63 which designated English as the official language of the state. This resulted in declines in educational outcomes, barriers to services, challenges to voting access, and more, which proved that English-only is harmful to the public. In 2000, Federal law established much-needed multi-language mandates and superseded Prop 63. CA community leaders responded, advocating and winning some of the strongest language access policies in the country. Our work continues.
Today our crisis response to wildfires, earthquakes, and pandemics necessitates reaching our multilingual AAPI population of which 30% are limited English speakers. The 2023 mass shooting in Monterey Park (a predominantly Chinese speaking community), highlighted critical shortcomings in the ability to communicate with LEP communities during crises. In light of that, we partnered with Assemblymember Fong to win more language access legislation. In our classrooms, we are finally catching up with multi-lingual teaching which was set back by decades of those English-only laws. We secured $5 million in 2022 to support the accreditation of Asian language bilingual teachers. This year, we are working to provide financial aid for bilingual teaching materials in partnership with Assemblymember Gonzalez. With local advocacy to support historically underrepresented AAPI communities, we are continuously moving the needle toward a truly inclusive, multilingual CA.
Without federal protections for language access, we stand to lose decades of progress and the ability to legally challenge systemic discrimination against our communities.
We urge you to stand with us against this attack on our communities.”
# # #
