Imagine being pulled over on the highway by a police officer and asked to undergo an English proficiency test. If you’re a commercial truck driver, it’s something you could indeed face. A new law in Wyoming allows all law enforcement officers to decommission trucks operated by drivers who aren’t proficient in English. “It creates a $1,000 penalty, and they’re able to take the driver out of service and penalize them,” State Senator Stephan Pappas told Wyoming Public Radio. “And, if they’re caught again, then there’s an additional
$1,000 penalty and there’s some jail time also attached.” Wyoming is one of the first states to pass a law that seeks to enforce an executive order signed by President Trump last April. The executive order states that English proficiency “should be a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers. They should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station officers.”
The executive order followed high-profile fatal accidents involving drivers of Indian origin in Florida and Indiana. Kendra Cowley, a resident of Laramie, Wyoming, expressed her concerns about the new state law to Wyoming Public Radio. “Providing law enforcement with a subjective power to end someone’s career on the spot, based on their language skills, is a precedent that I am personally terrified of setting,” Cowley said. “If this were truly a concern about safety, I think we would consider how the additional stress and anxiety of racial profiling and potentially losing your livelihood during a random truck stop will impact a driver’s ability to focus on their job and on the road. To me, HB 32 doesn’t improve safety. It creates an enforcement system designed to intimidate and exclude immigrant workers.”
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge. [Comments? Contributions? Please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]