From Fox News Latino:

SANTA ANA, CALIF. (AP) – California voters are considering repealing a law banning most bilingual education, an idea state residents overwhelmingly endorsed almost 20 years ago. English immersion was a hot-button topic when voters approved Proposition 227 in 1998, with supporters saying it would help non-speakers assimilate by forcing them to learn the language.

It did. As evidence, here in the San Fernando Valley with a half-million or more Latinos, there’s virtually zero demand for Hollywood movies dubbed into Spanish. Latino teens want to hear Captain America speak English. They now have no problem following rapid-fire English language dialogue in comic book movies.

Being able to speak English, the world’s economically dominant language, is the single most fundamental blessing public schools can bestow on Latinos.

Critics claimed it unfairly targeted the state’s growing immigrant population.

Yet, now the ethnic activists are planning their revenge.

This year’s Proposition 58 has barely caused a ripple and is expected to pass, a reflection of California’s transition to a state where Hispanics now outnumber whites and amid growing support for bilingual education in many places, including politically conservative Utah. It’s not just immigrant parents who want their children taught bilingually. Increasingly, English-speaking American parents want their children to learn Spanish, Mandarin and other languages to better compete in a global marketplace.

“Kids who speak multiple languages, they are more employable, and do better than their monolingual counterparts,” said state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens.

Not if they don’t speak English well.

“The schools that have these programs tend to be in very influential parts of the state — what we want to ensure is every kid across the state, regardless of their zip code, will have access to these programs.”

Mandarin programs are a way for parents to get their kids into schools with whites and Asians, away from blacks and Mexicans. It has very little to do with teaching kids from Spanish-speaking homes in Spanish in order to retard their acquisition of English so they remain Univision viewers their whole lives.

Spanish immersion gets white people’s kids away from African-American kids, who tend to despise Spanish. Around 2001, only 4 of the 900 or so African-American LAPD officers spoke Spanish. African-Americans often find French cool, but French instruction is fading in public schools.

He wrote the legislation calling for the repeal of much of Proposition 227, which requires voter approval because it revises an earlier ballot measure. It goes before voters in a presidential election year when Republican Donald Trump has called for tougher immigration policies that incensed many Latino voters. Neither side in the Proposition 58 debate focuses on Trump in their campaigns on the measure, which has support from the state Democratic Party, California Teachers Association and California Chamber of Commerce board. Opponents include the state Republican Party and businessman Ron Unz, who sponsored the 1998 initiative. Since Proposition 227 passed, Massachusetts and Arizona also adopted laws promoting English immersion, but many have moved in the opposite direction. Bilingual education is used widely in Texas for English learners and there has been rising interest in programs that mix English learners and English speakers in the classroom and split instruction between English and another language to encourage mastery of both.

Because being a white who can speak a little Spanish with a Tex-Mex accent is the royal road to economic success in the 21st Century.