ProEnglish is an American nonprofit lobbying organization that is part of the English-only movement. The group supports making English the only official language of the United States. The group has also campaigned against immigration reform and bilingual education.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti-Defamation League, which track extremist groups in the United States, identify the group as an anti-immigrant group. The SPLC designated the organization as a hate group.
Founding and leadership
The group was founded in 1994 as English Language Advocates. The group was established by John Tanton, a leading figure in the anti-immigration movement, along with several of his associates from the organization U.S. English, from which Tanton had resigned after a controversy over racially-charged memos that he had written. The organization is part of Tanton's broader "loose-knit" network of anti-immigration organizations; others include Californians for Population Stabilization, the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, and Social Contract Press. As of 2015, ProEnglish "is one of the few remaining groups in Tanton's network in which he remains actively involved." ProEnglish is a project of US Inc., a Petoskey, Michigan-based 501(c)(3) group that is also part of the Tanton network. Dr. Tanton died in July 2019.
The group was originally based in Arlington, Virginia, where it shared office space with NumbersUSA. Its headquarters are now located in Washington, D.C. Robert D. Park was the first chair of the group. Later, Rosalie Pedalino Porter became chair of the group.
The group's former executive directors are K.C. McAlpin and Robert "Bob" Vandervoort. In 2016, Sam Pimm, former executive director of Young Americans for Freedom and former executive director of a pro-Ben Carson super PAC, became executive director of the group. Subsequently, Stephen D. Guschov, a lawyer who formerly worked at Liberty Counsel, became executive director of the group.
Beliefs and activities
ProEnglish has been a major part of the "English-as-official-language movement." The group also has opposed comprehensive immigration reform. The chief purpose of the organization at the time of its founding was to defend the Arizona "Official English" ballot initiative, which was adopted in 1988, overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1998, and re-enacted in revised form by Arizona voters in 2006. The group has also supported federal English-only legislation, specifically the English Language Unity Act. In addition to seeking the enactment of laws and policies declaring English to be the official language, ProEnglish "seeks to end bilingual education, repeal federal mandates for the translation of government documents and voting ballots in languages other than English." Among ProEnglish's key priorities is the rescission of Executive Order 13166, an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton which states that any entity that receives federal funds "must provide whatever services it offers in any foreign language spoken by anyone likely to receive those services." ProEnglish also opposes Puerto Rican statehood unless Puerto Rico were to adopt English as its official language.
The group's reported ties to the white nationalist movement have drawn scrutiny. The Anti-Defamation League wrote in 2014 that the group had a "nativist agenda and xenophobic origins and ties." Robert Vandervoort of Illinois, the former executive director of ProEnglish, was head of the Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance, the racist magazine led by Jared Taylor that serves as an outlet for white nationalist ideology. In 2012, ProEnglish hosted a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on "The Failure of Multiculturalism," on which one of the panelists was VDARE founder Peter Brimelow. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups in the United States, designated the group as a hate group in its 2014, 2015, and 2016 annual reports. The group has dismissed such criticism.