The American people support a policy of letting employers require English in the workplace.

So did an overwhelming majority of legislators in both houses of Congress.

So what is the delay in enacting the provision given this support?

It's been less than a week since New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote just this month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,' " he told the Senate last Thursday.

Pelosi, it seems, is caving in to the Hispanic Caucus. In typical Democrat fashion, she is declaring that the minorities must prevail over the majority of Americans and their representatives.

Living in Texas, I've seen the problems that arise when employees do not all speak the same language. There is one local fast food restaurant that I no longer patronize because the linguistic confusion in the kitchen regularly results in orders that are incorrectly made. The city recently hired a contractor to work on water lines that run, in part, through my yard -- and they had to call a supervisor on the cell phone in order to explain to my wife who they were and what they were doing digging up the back yard because not one member of the work crew could speak English.

The last time I checked, the overwhelming majority of Americans spoke English as their first language. Employers ought to be able to require that employees be able to communicate with that majority without a translator.

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Posted by: Greg at 11:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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