With the 2008 elections having a great focus on the topic of immigration, an issue has come up in the House and Senate over a law that law that prohibits employers from firing people who don't speak English on the job. This issue emerged from a government lawsuit against the Salvation Army. A Salvation Army thrift store in Massachusetts had fired two employees for speaking Spanish while sorting clothes.
This issue has split the political party just as immigration has. The Republicans support the law while the Democrats are against it. The law has been barred for more than 30 years from employers. But Republicans in the Senate have protected those, from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, from enforcing the rules against English-only workplaces.
The EEOC regulation states that this rule of English only can be enforced if it is crucial to the purpose of the job. But in this case clothes sorting was not. The rules have their legal origin in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The EEOC says it doesn't get many cases of this type of discrimination and the cases they do get are usually settled out of court. But this case was genuine because they two women had worked for the Salvation Army for 5 years and them speaking Spanish had never been an issue. "In other cases, the agency has defended workers who complained they weren't allowed to speak their native languages while on their lunch break or in telephone conversations with their spouses."
Senator Lamar Alexander, Tennessee, insists that he is not anti-immigrant, but that speaking English is crucial for immigrants to assimilate into society.
Written By: Sergio Morelos
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