Spanish Appears to Be on Trial in Ariz. Case

By Terry Greene Sterling, National Journal
August 2, 2012

Four years ago, a Minnesota retiree who had resettled in the Phoenix area was upset when she visited a McDonald’s and observed workers speaking Spanish to each other.

Known only as “Gail” in court records, the retiree penned a letter to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who’d become popular among the county’s aging majority white population for his crackdowns on illegal immigration in heavily Latino neighborhoods and workplaces.

“I am a fan of yours and what you are doing to rid the area of illegal immigrants,” Gail wrote Arpaio. Her letter is frequently mentioned in an ongoing trial in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, where Arpaio has denied allegations that he and his department engaged in widespread racial profiling of Hispanics during traffic stops, detentions, and arrests in the nation’s fourth-most populous county. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/immigration/spanish-appears-to-be-on-trial-in-ariz-case-20120802

AFL-CIO President Urges Immigration Reform to Stimulate Economy

"Too many U.S. employers actually like the current state of the immigration system-a system where immigrants are both plentiful and undocumented-afraid and available. Too many employers like a system where our borders are closed and open at the same time-closed enough to turn immigrants into second-class citizens, open enough to ensure an endless supply of socially and legally powerless cheap labor."

Remarks by Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO
at City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
June 18, 2010

Thank you, President Roller [City Club Board President Jan Roller].

Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here with you in the great city of Cleveland. I want to talk to you about the grave economic challenges we face today - and the labor movement’s vision for where we need to go. [...]

Read the full speech:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/06/aflcio-president-urges-immigration-reform-to-stimulate-economy.html


Who Are You Calling Names?
By Richard Trumka, Huffington Post
June 22, 2010

"Wop." "Hunkie." "Polack." "Kike."

When I was a kid growing up in Nemacolin, Pa., those are some of the slurs people used for us.

Why? Because our parents or grandparents came to this country from somewhere else, fleeing poverty and war, seeking opportunity and hope. As a kid, every person I knew who was older than 50 spoke broken English. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-trumka/who-are-you-calling-names_b_619991.html

In Dallas, Tickets for Not Speaking English

New York Times from Associated Press
October 24, 2009

DALLAS (AP) — Dallas police officers have improperly cited drivers for not being able to speak English 38 times in the past three years, Chief David Kunkle said Friday.
The discovery came after a woman was pulled over earlier this month for making an illegal U-turn and was given a ticket for being a “non-English-speaking driver.”

Chief Kunkle said the citations were disappointing for Dallas, a city where Hispanics make up 44 percent of the more than one million residents and where many other residents are Southeast Asian refugees.

“I was, I guess, surprised and stunned,” the chief said of the ticketing. “We are a very diverse community.” [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25dallas.html?_r=1&ref=us

Speaking English a Requirement for Motherhood?

Reunite Cirila Baltazar Cruz with her Baby
By Cindy Von Quednow, RaceWire (the ColorLines blog)
June 14, 2009

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, in November 2008, Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl. Soon after, her daughter was taken away from her because she could not communicate with the hospital attendants.

Far away from her native Oaxaca, Mexico, she did not understand the Puerto Rican interpreter assigned to her. Cirila speaks Chatino, an indigenous Mexican language spoken by about 50,000 people. A social worker called in by hospital authorities deemed the new mother negligent and unfit to raise the baby, stating as reasons that she was an “illegal immigrant” and that she did not speak English. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/06/speaking_english_a_requirement.html

See also:
Immigrant fights to keep baby girl
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20090615/NEWS/906150320/1001/news

Good News from Nashville: Diversity Not Uniformity

Linguist Geoffrey Pullum wrote that "making English the official language of the United States of America is about as urgently called for as making hotdogs the official food at baseball games."

Tom Barry, TransBorder Project
January 23, 2009

"Nashville listened to its leaders—the governor, the mayor, and a vast coalition of churches, businesses, and universities—and defeated an English-only measure by nearly 10,000 votes in Thursday's special election." That's the report from the Tennesseanthe day after the city referendum on an amendment that would have made Nashville the largest city in the nation with an "official English" law.

With financial and logistical support from the Arlington, VA-based ProEnglish, Nashville councilman Eric Crafton founded Nashville English First to spearhead a charter amendment that would have obligated the city government to conduct all government business in English. While the main case for the English-only measure was that it would save the city in translation costs, the issue of identity set the tone of the debate. [...]

Read the full article:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5812