Cuomo translation Executive Order harms immigrants and native New Yorkers

October 11, 2011

CONTACT: Phil Kent, (404) 226-3549

ARLINGTON, VA – “Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order mandating that state agencies provide documents and interpreters in six languages for immigrants, including illegal aliens, seeking public services not only wastes money that New Yorkers can ill afford, but destroys incentives immigrants have to learn English, assimilate, and become self-sufficient,” says K.C. McAlpin, the executive director of ProEnglish, an Arlington-based organization that advocates making English the official language of government operations.

“New York faces a $2 billion deficit, yet Governor Cuomo and his allies are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars promoting immigrant dependency and multiculturalism in callous disregard to the interests of both taxpayers and immigrants. Instead, New York ought to enact an official English-in-government law in which all state business is done in English with common sense exceptions, like 31 other states have done,” McAlpin notes.

“Governor Cuomo is catering to activist-led ethnic interest groups who have a political stake in keeping immigrants isolated, alienated, and poor, while in the process diluting America’s English language heritage and weakening the melting pot tradition that is and always has been rooted in assimilation and learning our common tongue,” McAlpin says.

“The suggestion that catering to the language translation and interpreter needs of 2.5 million immigrants will cost New Yorkers a scant $1.5 million a year is a joke. If New York taxpayers want to know why government spending is out of control, they need look no farther than this. We hope the New York legislature is energized enough by Gov. Cuomo’s action to pass official English legislation and nullify his executive order,” McAlpin concludes.