This weekend I started a job in the restaurant industry. Since the industry is the largest employer of immigrants in the country, unsurprisingly the majority of the staff are Mexican immigrants. And since they're Mexican immigrants, all of them speak Spanish, which isn't really a problem for me because I can speak a little Spanish and understand most of it. The supervisor, on the other hand, has a problem with it.
Within the first 10 minutes I was there, Spanish-speaking staff were being scolded. They were surprised by this, so it must've been their first time being reprimanded at this job. Most of them had worked there for over a year. So why now are they being penalized for their native tongue? I'm sure you're all aware of the war on immigration that's happening in the country and in this state; it's leaving employers of illegal immigrants shaking in their boots and apparently scared enough to go as far as to tell employees they cannot speak their natural language.
So here's where the protests come in, "They're in our country they should learn the language." Etcetera. My problem here is not that supervisors are asking the employees to speak English with customers, that goes without question, but the Spanish speaking employees are being penalized for speaking Spanish amongst themselves. This is not just happening at this one location either.
All over the country, foreign language-speaking workers are getting a slap on the wrist each time they communicate with each other. In 2005, 22 Supercuts in Chicago were sued by numerous Latino workers who felt discriminated against by the salon's ban on the Spanish language. In 2006 there were 200 charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision claiming discrimination based on English-only rules at the workplace. These charges are brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination "against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin." The native language of someone is inextricably tied to their national origin, so banning someone from speaking their national language is illegal in most cases.
The only justifiable reason, in court and in my book, to ban someone from speaking in his or her natural language in a workplace is if the policy is a business necessity. If that is the case, we need to take into account the costs and time of learning a language.
Many organizations, such as the U.S. English, Inc., have been pushing for the passage of English as the national language. But unlike many other the organizations, the founder of U.S. English, Inc. was an immigrant himself and the chairman/CEO, Mauro E. Mujica, is also an immigrant from Chile. Mujica believes that if English were to become the official language there would be more opportunities for immigrants to learn and speak English.
This is the only true benefit I can see of English becoming the nation's official language, and I can see many dangers as well.
Banning a language automatically devalues it and in turn devalues its heritage, consequently placing those citizens as second class. As journalist and novelist Angela Carter said, "Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation." To ban a language is to dominate over an entire culture and while the United States remains a country without a legally declared national language, no one has the authority to diminish a language and in turn its culture.
Reach the reporter at: adprice4@asu.edu.
