[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 14218]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                          MULTILINGUAL BALLOTS

  (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, when I was born, my 
grandparents could not express themselves in the constitutional right 
to vote. Today we have an opportunity to affirm the very basic values 
of America, and that is to reaffirm every American's right to vote 
without barrier or bar.
  And so I rise to explain the King amendment which has given the wrong 
impression, and that is the amendment that would eliminate multilingual 
ballots for citizens. I ask my good friend what he would do for the 
young soldier who is an immigrant, who is a legal permanent resident 
and has offered his life in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan and who has 
managed to make legal permanent residents and then citizens of his own 
family who have a language barrier because of just recently coming to 
this country, maybe conversant enough to become citizens, but not 
enough to read a ballot.
  This amendment is unconstitutional and un-American, and I hope that 
we will together, Republicans and Democrats, uphold the values of 
America.

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