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City Council Will Consider Bilingual Pay Again

Now if your interest is in preserving Spanish, a teacher's fluency in
English is irrelevant. Consider the remarks of a principal of New York
City Spanish-English bilingual school, Sidney Morison, who argues that
"English, as a majority language, is acquired naturally by children
living in the United States. Spanish, on the other hand, has to be nurtured,
developed and protected."

In this man's opinion Spanish speakers were akin to redwood trees. And
other people deserved to be paid to "protect" them.

SALEM, Ore. - Some English-speaking firefighters are losing their jobs because of an Oregon state law that requires them to be bilingual.

The Department of Forestry enacted a law three years ago that requires them to be bilingual,
but this year they're actually enforcing it.

2002 was such a devastating wildfire season, contractors were scrambling to find firefighters.

Hispanics often filled their needs on the fire lines.

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Jim Walker of the Department of Forestry said "what we do know is 85 percent of the crew make-up is of Hispanic decent."

But many of the Hispanic fire fighters do not speak English. Walker says the language barrier is a concern.

Those concerns led the state to draft a new rule that all firefighting bosses speak English, and the languages of crew members who don't speak English.

Jaime Pickering, a squad boss overseeing 20 firefighters, says the rule means "job losses for Americans. The white people."

SALEM, Ore.—Some English-speaking firefighters are losing their jobs because of an Oregon state law that requires them to be bilingual.

The Department of Forestry enacted a law three years ago that requires them to be bilingual, but this year they’re actually enforcing it.

{snip}

Jim Walker of the Department of Forestry said “what we do know is 85 percent of the crew make-up is of Hispanic decent.”

But many of the Hispanic fire fighters do not speak English. Walker says the language barrier is a concern.

Martha
Sandoval is a fifty-year old Mexican woman with nine
children and a second grade education, who wanted to
drive rather than walk to her jobs in Mobile, Alabama.
Problem was, she couldn’t pass the driving test,
which in Alabama is given - following an Official
English statute passed ten years ago - only in
English.

After she
was arrested repeatedly for driving without a license,
the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil
Liberties Union took up Sandoval’s case. She won
when a district court judge held that the English
requirement amounted to unlawful discrimination on the
basis of “national origin” - and thus a
violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
(which of course says nothing about language.) 
Her victory threatens the entire edifice of law
and custom pushing new immigrants to learn English.