President Trump issued an Executive Order in April reinforcing a policy, suspended by the Obama Administration, requiring commercial truckers to be able to read traffic and road signs and pass English proficiency tests to receive a Commercial Drivers License.
The move didn’t cause a bottleneck of news coverage in April, though CNN's Jake Tapper did ask Chad Wolf on The Lead with Jake Tapper April 28: “How would this English-speaking requirement make our roadways safer? And what would you say to someone who argues it's a slippery slope that could be used against other professions, and that just because you don't speak English doesn't mean that you're in this country illegally?”
But a horrific accident on the Florida Turnpike August 12, caused by illegal immigrant truck driver Harjinder Singh making an illegal U-turn that led to the deaths of three people, put the issue in the news (though not on the legacy networks) in grim fashion and raised questions.
According to local Florida news station WPTV, Singh was given an English Language Proficiency (ELP) assessment after the crash. Singh allegedly "failed the assessment, providing correct responses to just 2 of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying 1 of 4 highway traffic signs.” Did the truck driver’s lack of English ability and failure to identify highway traffic signs contribute to the fatal accident?
Singh, who entered the United States illegally in 2018, was issued a full-term commercial driver’s license in the state of Washington in July 2023, a license illegal immigrants are not allowed to obtain. A year later, Singh was issued a limited-term/non-domiciled commercial driver’s license in California. It sounds like Democratic-run state governments are handing out Commercial Drivers Licenses whether or not drivers are in the country legally or can even reliably identify traffic signs.
Before the crash, coverage of Trump’s order was largely negative, painting the move as part of Trump’s hostility toward immigrants and diversity. The worst example came from the automotive news site Jalopnik in an August 7 story by Andy Kalmowitz about police ticketing truckers in Alabama for not speaking English.
The writer had a liberal field day with the story -- a take that would sour just five days later.
We sort of knew it would only be a matter of time before overzealous local cops enforced President Trump's June executive order that requires all truck drivers to speak English (something, mind you, that was already a law). Now, two truckers traveling through DeKalb County, Alabama, have been issued tickets for not speaking English. I'm shocked that something like this happened in Alabama. I'll tell you what....Of course, I'm fairly certain these truckers have no issue reading posted signs on the side of the road. After all, they were able to get their CDLs.
So did Singh. How did that work out?
Jalopnik might want to perform its own U-turn on this paragraph:
Of course, an order like this — and the fact it was carried out — is just another way to "other" people of color. The basic facts are that most truckers already speak English proficiently enough to do their jobs to the standard the U.S. government is holding them to. Regardless of that, though, there are plenty of tools to bridge language barriers between truckers and the general public, and I find the idea that they can't read road signs to be a bit rich.
This headline appeared in early August, originally in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "English proficiency rules spark concern among foreign-born truckers," while the July 24 Albany Times-Union claimed “Truck driver English mandates spark concern as labor shortage grows.”
One detail stands out after the fatal accident, as shown in this early August headline: “Non-English speaking truck drivers finding sanctuary in California.” Truckers in California were "only getting warnings and are not losing privileges to drive should they fail a basic English evaluation.”
California issued Singh a commercial driver’s license, suggesting lax policies in liberal states can have nationwide consequences.
