http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-usenglish30aug30,1,1067035.storySchwarzenegger Language-Advocacy Link Is Criticized
The candidate for governor is called on to sever ties with U.S. English. Some leaders of the group have been accused of racial agenda.
By Greg Krikorian and Joe Mathews
Times Staff Writers
August 30, 2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming under growing criticism from civil rights groups and immigrants' advocates for his 16-year membership on the advisory board of U.S. English, a Washington-based organization that bills itself as the nation's largest group dedicated to preserving English as America's official language.
For much of Schwarzenegger's tenure on the board, U.S. English Inc. has been dogged by accusations that the group's day-to-day leadership has used its English-first message to hide a more racially divisive agenda.
Seizing on evidence of the group's ties to extremist groups, the country's oldest Latino civil rights group — the League of United Latin American Citizens — called on Schwarzenegger Thursday to quit the U.S. English board.
Other civil rights groups have followed suit, saying that they see a pattern of antipathy to immigrants in Schwarzenegger's service with U.S. English; his support of the 1994 ballot initiative Proposition 187, which would have cut off public services to illegal immigrants in California; and his selection of that proposition's key proponent, former Gov. Pete Wilson, as a campaign co-chairman.
-continued-