Adam Aucoin
Current Event
The title of my current event is “Judge: Candidate’s grasp of English is too poor for her to run for office.” I got the article off of cnn.com. The main idea of the article is that Alejandrina Cabrera, a female politician is being disallowed for running for public office due to her not speaking very fluent in English. She was running to be a member of the San Luis city council in Arizona. The judge at Yuma County Court declared that her English was not proficient enough to run for office. The city of San Luis is heavily populated with Hispanics. 87% of residents speak a language other than English at home and 98.7% of residents are of Hispanic descent, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Cabrera told the New York Times, “You go to the market, it’s Spanish. You go to the doctor, it’s Spanish. when you pay the bills for the lights or water, it’s Spanish.
With all the talk about Spanish being prominent it can be tough to see why it is such a big deal she is running for city council. Although when it comes to politics, it is a different story. You need certain language skills to function in that setting.
Juan Carlos Escamilla, the mayor of San Luis, had major doubts about Cabrera’s ability to do that job with her lack of English proficiency. He went on to file a lawsuit wanting the courts to decide if her language skills were adequate. The fight became intense when opponents tried to block her from running after she tried to remove Escamilla from office. People were wondering at this point how much English is needed to run for office. Cabrera told the New York Times, I speak little English. The newspaper said it was said in a very heavy accent.
Yuma County Superior Court Judge John Nelson made is ruling after a series of testimonies by linguistic experts and Cabrera. Cabrera is a US citizen and was asked where she graduated from, where she was born and what her name was. She was able to tell her lawyer her name and where she was born but struggled to say where she graduated. She was asked that questions 3 times, but couldn’t answer in English. The judge then made his ruling against Cabrera. He said it wasn’t an intelligence issue, but rather a lack of proficiency in English.
Cabrera and her lawyers weren’t satisfied so they argued in court that the ruling was unfair and unconstitutional. They believed that there aren’t any specific standards for proficiency of a council candidate.
This pressing issue has been a part of GOP debates this week, where many believe that English should be the official language and the only one taught in schools. Many believe that this should be the truth and that within our government everyone should speak English, but others think different. A Altino Elected Officials executive director, Arturo Vargas says, I think it should be up to the yvoters to decide what kind of representative they want. I think it doesn’t serve our democracy well when people are not given all the options that they have.
I agree and disagree with the judges verdict on this women. I feel that if someone is living in this country legally then they do have the right to run for city council. I do however think that it does make a difference with the amount of English this person can speak. English is not the official language of our country, but it is the language that most the the people in this country speak. A member of community council needs to be able to communicate with the people of the community, and for that, they need to be able to speak to the general public who speaks English. However, I do think that if someone is qualified and ready to become a member of the community council, then they should be allowed to try, and let the people decide if they are a good person for the job, regardless of their oral language. I do think that English should be the official language of the United States. Its how most people learn in school, and its used in almost every public place. I feel that although it isn't "officially" the official language, i think many people feel that it is already.
ReplyDeleteI am on the same boat as Derek, the judge could have given the women another chance to run for council instead of shutting her down after learning that she can't speak English. Most of our country has another language that is spoken heavily because of the amount of the immigrants that we allow to migrate here. Many of those people learn our language enough to get by in day to day life but others do not need too. I think that in the circumstances of this women, she should have learned how to speak English before she ran for the council. Knowing that most of the people in our country speak this language, I think that it is most important that she speak English. I can understand where the judge is coming from but there are things that he could have done better. For the time being he could of offered a translator to her and then told her that she needed to learn the English language before she could try to run for council. This would benefit her because if you know two languages instead of just one her transcript will be more appealing to voters. I think that a person running for any office no matter which country they are in should know the language that is spoken by a majority of the people that live there. If a person has all of the qualifications to run for office then they should be able to run but in her case she couldn't even understand the judge. I think that English should become the official language of the United States but under certain circumstances. I do not think that at ATM machines or on billboards that the government should take away the sub text for people that speak other languages. I also think that students should not be required to take another language such as Spanish, German, etc. in order to get into a good college. Like Derek said, many people already feel like English is the language of choice in the United States but making it official should not change much.
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