" English for the Children," the campaign to end bilingual education in California with a ballot measure, gathers steam. Fernando Vega, a Latino leader and lifelong Democrat who rallied Hispanic votes for the 1992 Clinton- Gore campaign, has agreed to join the anti-bilingual crusade as honorary chairman. Vega supported bilingual education in the past and even helped implement a program when he was on a local school board. "But now," Vega said, "after many years of trying, it is obvious that bilingual education just doesn't work, and we must end it."
The Latino leader's participation should help defuse bad-faith attacks that criticism of bilingual education amounts to "an attack on Latinos or other immigrants," says campaign director Ron Unz, a maverick Republican who distinguished himself in 1994 as an opponent of Proposition 187, the anti- illegal-immigration measure that, as Unz puts it, caused Republicans to be " perceived as anti-immigrant." Unz and the other backers of the ballot measure seem to be succeeding in making the case that their opposition to bilingual education is in fact proimmigrant. English for the Children would provide waivers for the small percentage of parents who do not want their children to receive instruction in English-only classrooms. The initiative also calls for $ 50 million per year for 10 years to fund adult literacy programs. Unz may succeed in showing you can be pro-immigration and anti-multiculturalism at the same time and that this combination is a political winner.