6 February 2012, 8:37 pm
why do hispanics say its racist to expect hispanic candidate to be proficient in english or should all candidates be expected to speak english or do enter an era where candidates will need to have translators on standby paid for by the taxpayers ?Reporting from San Luis, Ariz.— For almost a decade, Alejandrina Cabrera has had no trouble speaking her mind in this dusty Arizona border town. She's gone door to door campaigning for City Council candidates. She's addressed the City Council. She's even led two recall petitions against the mayor. But when she decided to run for San Luis City Council, she hit a surprising roadblock: her language. Like virtually everyone else in town, Cabrera conducts her life in Spanish. Late last month, Yuma County Superior Court Judge John Nelson ruled that Cabrera's command of English was insufficient for her to hold public office. She appealed, and the Arizona Supreme Court is expected to rule on her candidacy as early as Monday. This case is less about English versus Spanish than about small-town politics, but it has potentially wide-reaching implications for border towns where Spanish is spoken at home, at work and just about everywhere else. Cabrera, a self-described housewife who was born in Yuma but raised in Mexico, speaks shaky English with a heavy accent. She argues that she can read and understand English better than she speaks it, and that her limited ability should not matter. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-san-luis-english-20120206,0,232358.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fnation+%28L.A.+Times+-+National+News%29 National+News%2 will candidates soon expect everyone to learn Spanish ?... Read More »
Share on del.icio.us
Share on digg
Share on Technorati
Share on reddit
Share on Yahoo!
Share on Facebook