ProEnglish Support Makes “Official English” the Law in Queen Anne’s County, Md.

Contact: Phil Kent
May 10,2012                                                                                               (404) 226-3549 /philkent@philkent.com

ARLINGTON, VA— ProEnglish, the nation’s leading advocate of official English, testified before the Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, Board of County Commissioners prior to the panel voting four-to-one last week to designate English as the official language of the county government.

“ProEnglish recommended that the Queen Anne’s commissioners amend the proposed ordinance to reflect the ProEnglish model ordinance language, which has proven to withstand legal attack,” said ProEnglish Executive Director Robert Vandervoort. “Queen Anne’s is the second county in Maryland in less than three months to adopt this ordinance, following Frederick County which passed a similar ordinance in February.”

ProEnglish Board member Asgar Asgarov, a native of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan who is now an American citizen, testified before the commissioners at an April hearing and urged them to approve the ordinance. “Instead of encouraging immigrants and their children to learn English, government — at the local, state and federal levels— is making it policy to communicate with non-English speakers in their native languages,” Asgarov said. “These kinds of policies represent a total reversal of the traditional model of American assimilation.”

“This new ordinance will help promote new immigrants’ successful integration into American life, save taxpayer dollars, and set a good precedent for other counties and the Maryland state legislature to follow,” Asgarov said. “Indeed, 31 states have passed official-English-in-government laws and Congress is considering similar legislation at the federal level.”