ProEnglish and fifteen national organizations released a letter to President Bush protesting the Administration’s policy of letting Mexican truck drivers demonstrate their required English proficiency by answering questions in Spanish.
The letter responded to a March Senate oversight hearing at which U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said that Mexicans driving trucks into the United States under the Administration’s border demonstration project are designated “proficient in English” even if they have to use Spanish to explain the meaning of U.S. traffic signs.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations that regulate U.S. trucking companies require drivers to “read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.”
Besides ProEnglish, organizations signing the letter included the America’s Independent Truckers’ Association, Eagle Forum, US Business and Industry Council, Coalitions for America, and Concerned Women for America. The complete text of the letter is available on the ProEnglish website.
