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Florida Today "HOUSE GIVES PUERTO RICANS VOTE ON STATEHOOD" Billy House Gannett News Service (03/05/98, Copyright 1998) After rejecting an amendment to make English the official language of the United States, the House on Wednesday night by a one-vote margin approved a bill to give Puerto Ricans another chance to vote on whether to become the 51st state. The 209-208 vote was completed shortly after 10 p.m. after nearly 10 hours of contentious debate. Most of it centered on the English-first amendment, which earlier in the day had seemed to put the entire Puerto Rico-statehood bill in jeopardy. Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., had attached his English-first amendment to the bill, saying he has seen how Canada has been nearly torn apart with secession votes by French-speaking Quebec. "We just cannot allow that to happen (in the U.S.)," Solomon told the House. "Our English language has permitted this country to live up to our national motto. That motto is e pluribus unum. It means out of many, one," Solomon said. "The English language is the reason we have survived these last 200 years." But the measure's chief sponsor, House Resources Committee chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, lashed out at Solomon's action by calling it a "poison pill" addition designed to scuttle the statehood measure he said is "long overdue." And Rep. Carlos Romero-Barcelo, Puerto Rico's nonvoting congressional delegate who's been pushing for a statehood vote, said the English-first amendment was unfair to Puerto Ricans, especially those who have fought in wars for the United States in the past century. "We are not rejecting English. We are embracing English. But we also want Spanish as an official language," Barcelo said. English and Spanish are the official languages of Puerto Rico and most of the island's school curriculum is in Spanish. But while English is widely used in government and business in Puerto Rico, only a quarter of the island's 3.8 million people speak English fluently, according to the U.S. census. Supporters of the statehood bill, including two Puerto Rican-born New York lawmakers - Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Rep. Jose Serrano - argued that creating a language requirement for Puerto Rico for statehood was divisive and unnecessary. "Let's not muddy the waters," Serrano urged. Solomon's English-first amendment also drew opposition from several groups that previously had not taken a stand on the bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights wrote to House members Tuesday stating English already is the common language of the country, and that "we don't need government coercion to learn English."
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