‘A harmful barrier’: new Florida law mandates all driving tests to be offered in English only
Critics say law will disproportionately affect immigrant communities and those who speak limited English
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Before the change, exams for non-commercial driver’s licenses were offered in multiple languages. Photograph: Rafa Fernandez Torres/Getty Images
As of 6 February, people in Florida are no longer be able to take driver’s license examinations in any language other than English, the Florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles (DMV) said in a statement.
Before the change, exams for noncommercial driver’s licenses were offered in multiple languages, including Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese, while the commercial learner’s permit and commercial driver’s license knowledge exams were both offered in English and Spanish. Now all driver’s license knowledge and skills testing will be conducted in English.
“Florida’s decision to administer driver’s license services only in English is a harmful and unnecessary barrier that will disproportionately impact immigrant communities and other Floridians with limited English proficiency,” Keisha Mulfort, deputy director of communications for the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “Access to a driver’s license is not a luxury; it is essential for everyday life, including getting to work, taking children to school, attending medical appointments and safely meeting basic family needs.”
According to the Florida DMV, language translation services will no longer be allowed for knowledge or skills examinations, as was customary. Printed exams in languages other than English will also be removed.
“Thirty per cent of households in Florida speak a non-English language, meaning this haphazard state decision will have sweeping consequences for millions of families,” Mulfort wrote. “Florida’s government should be working to ensure public services are accessible to the communities it serves, not using language as a gatekeeping tool that isolates people and makes daily life harder. Every Floridian deserves equal access to essential services, regardless of the language they speak.”
Adriana Rivera, the communications director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said that the decision is “ill-advised, to say the least”. Rivera said the decision is making it very difficult for US citizens who don’t speak English, including the large percentage of Puerto Ricans in the state, because they were born and raised in a territory where Spanish is the primary language.
“It’s beyond my comprehension how they are doing this, and it’s obvious that they have not thought about all Floridians,” Rivera said. “Puerto Rico is just one part of the equation, a very important part of the equation, but we have US citizens at various degrees of their English-language learning journey.”
Mulfort said that making state services accessible only to English speakers “creates a two-tiered system” in which “some Floridians are able to navigate public life with ease, while others are pushed into confusion, delay and vulnerability. This kind of policy does not increase safety or efficiency. It increases hardship and deepens inequity.”
Compounding this change is the fact that Florida also lacks sufficient public transportation. Seminole county recently eliminated longstanding fixed bus routes and replaced them with an on-demand service available via a smartphone app. In Orlando, the fastest-growing metro in the country, buses are often late – or do not arrive at all .
“If we were talking about a state that had invested in public transportation, like we should have, then that is a completely different conversation,” Rivera said. “But you’re talking about a state where you need to drive everywhere, where even in towns and cities where you could potentially walk to a pharmacy or grocery store, a lot of times [they] don’t even have the sidewalks even if the business is not far.”
Florida is not the only state to limit the accessibility of driver’s licenses, though it does go further than many other states in that it does not provide an alternative for non-English speakers.
South Dakota, for instance, only offers the skills and driving portion of the exam in English, though the driver’s license application, study materials and written exam are available in Spanish . Alaska and Wyoming ’s driver’s license knowledge exams are only available in English, though applicants may bring a translator or interpreter.
Oklahoma only offers the state’s online written exam in English. This year, Alabama introduced a bill that would make it so that tests are only available in English, and a similar bill failed in committee last year in Tennessee .
“It’s such a huge ripple effect.” Rivera said. “You know people are going to drive no matter what. People need to live their lives; they are going to drive. But then you’re going to criminalize them for going to take their grandmother to their doctor’s appointment or for going to take their child to soccer practice and that’s not fair.”
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There is no "legal language" in the United States.
If the purpose of government is to serve the people, then significan linguistic minorities should be served.
If the purpose of government is to repress minorities, then only the most common language should be allowed.
The purpose of government in Florida is clear.
Yuh ain't Murican if yuh can't talk Murican.
Fuck, everything in Texas is in Tejano, Mexican or Vietnamese including the voting ballots.
Maybe Florida could borrow Abbott for a few decades?
Yes, but then Texas is known for welcoming the stranger...
One out of every 20 people in Texas is "believed to be undocumented";
5% equals 2 million.
The state ranks as the 8th largest economy in the world, the second largest in the USA, trailing only California.
California is believed to have 2.7 million "undocumented" people and is ranked as the world's 4th largest economy.
That's almost 7% of the population.
Is there any coincidence that two of the states that border Mexico have arguably two of the world's most dynamic economies?
Texas economic rank among the states - Search Videos
Meh, my grandparents who barely spoke a word of English when they legally immigrated through Ellis Island, managed to successfully assimilate here. Have and raise nine kids here.
Guess they were just made of tougher stuff than immigrants today ….
Well at least you are not indulging in overly generalizing.
The truth will set you free …
Are road signs in multiple languages? No. Are roads safer if some drivers can’t read road and street signs? No. Maybe this move will incentivize non-english speakers in this country to learn english which will help them assimilate into American society and open up a host of opportunities that can help them succeed. While some see this decision as being mean, i see it as common sense, an attempt to make our roads safer, and an opportunity for non-english speakers in the US to succeed beyond their current situation.
Most road signs are images or numbers, are they not? Granted that some may require words. In Canada road signs are required to be in English and French since it is a bilingual country, so I would think that in Florida they could probably be in English and Spanish if words were needed.
Why waste taxpayer's money? Why should Citizens who know English have to pay for something they don't need?
Since the issue is one that assumes that the learners are American citizens, they probably pay taxes for things they don't need but you do.
“Need” is largely a personal perception. One persons perceived “need” can be another’s unneeded. When asking my grandparents to teach us Slovak they would just refuse and say proudly, we don’t speak Slovak. We are American now, we speak American.
You see, they were just happy to be here. Thankful really. They did what was required to assimilate here with little complaint. Such is the difference between immigrants then and now.
I don't assume that they are Citizens and they need to learn the languages and customs not us accommodate them
Too much on signs that need to be read at 70 + is hard to take in .
The last mass wave of immigration resulted in 40 years of very restricted immigration, where immigrants immersed in a mono culture that was very pro American. Now of course, schools and the culture in general take a decidedly critical view of America and elected leaders promote ethnic division and strife and says things like ‘Non-whites share the same oppressor and we are the majority now. We can take over this country’
And I've seen roadsigns in three languages!
In China lots of signs are in English as well as Chinese, such as highway and street signs. Many other signs are as well. These are my favourites:
.
And ESPECIALLY this one...
Absolutely.
The USA spends $95 Billion a year on maintaining and building more nuclear bombs and missiles.
That is included in the US annual budget of $7.1 Trillion.
Do I need these? Do I need the MOAB or Daisycutters?
The California budget is almost 300 Billion a year but I no longer live there so boo hoo. I "need" nothing from them anymore.
I don't personally "need" SNAP, WIC or SpaceX or EXXON but I end up paying for them or subsidizing them just the same.
It just seems like the longer this country survives the more anal things politicians do to justify their paychecks.
People all over the world recognize universal driving signs. I've driven all over the world with no problems understanding signs. Getting used to driving on the left was more difficult. The most dangerous road I ever drove was The Road To Hannah on Maui about forty years ago before improvements. It is still dangerous. You can tell a lot of these yahoos have never been anywhere.
Giving the test in English only is a blatant means of excluding "others". Fascists enjoy doing things like this. MAGA is fascist.
How does it exclude "others".
Everyone that did not know English when they come here have the opportunity to learn it. My wife learned English in elementary in the country she came from and is bilingual. She did opt for Tagalog in California when she first took her driver license in the early 80s.......because she did not need to. Her brothers and nephew were the same when they came here in the late 90s/early 2000s.
There are zero official state road signs in Florida in any other language than English.
If someone cannot take the test in English, they do not need to drive here.
Foreigners can drive in the US with foreign licenses. People from all over the world come here, rent cars and road trip. The same for Americans in other countries. Don't get out much huh?
Quite possibly it is you who does not understand the failed concept of your argument.
If someone comes here legally and temporarily on vacation, then there is no requirement for them to get a local driver's license.
If that person plans on STAYING HERE LEGALLY AND PERMANENTLY, then they have to abide by the rules of the state they are in. You don't want to learn English and assimilate into American culture, go to California. You will be welcome there.
I have an international license I use when I go to the Philippines. I don't cry to the locals that their signs should be in English so I can understand them.
Bingo.
Most of the road and towns in Oklahoma are native words. Oolagah, Watumpka, Gotebo, Wahkeemah are not English...
A third or more of the US belonged to Spain, then Mexico; Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico, Oklahoma and large swaths of other states. France held the Louisiana Territory and vast parts of Canada. There are bilingual signs everywhere in those states. The East Coast, in the northern colonies nearly every lake, waterway and geographic feature like mountains were named by the Lenape, the Delaware, the Cherokee, the Iroquois and other native tribes.
We are no longer English subjects; we are the American Borg. And being American we can say fuck them in several languages because this is just another nonsensical piece of crying the victim, by the white European invaders currently held hostage by the cry baby in chief; this too shall pass.
Good point!
In many cases it's really a matter of safety . . .for all!
What are Americans, afraid off?
People with brown skin, (the GOP).
That's certainly correct where a large percentage of a state's population understand their own language a lot better than they do English, and Florida is such a state.
Just curious. Does the USA have a language that is considered a "second" language (not necessarily legally, but by custom)? I would think it to be Spanish.
As I said somewhere else yesterday, all of the voting material in my part of Texas is in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Everywhere else I have lived offered written instructions in English and Spanish with support for other languages on their website.
Every document I get from Social Security come with two pages of instructions in too many other languages to count and i admit as I open the mail and dispose of the envelope, those multi lingual pages go into the recycle bin right away.
If a staffer posted this they should be fired immediately. If the president posted it he should immediately apologize and make no excuses for this, because there aren’t any to be made.
Here’s the reality - everyone is using GPS to drive anyways, and it comes in whatever language you want. Taking the test in English has nothing to do with what will happen after that. This is just another means to stoke division.
It looks like they are taking the FMCSA's lead on english requirements.
Coming to a road near you: a non English speaking/reading truck driver barreling down the road at you and yours, 150+ MPH closure.
Have a nice day!
You mean like:
Exactly. This is just attempting to defend the indefensible. A hyper gaslighting special if you will.