No, requiring truck drivers to speak English is not anti-immigrant — until it is | Opinion

The Trump administration has wasted no time using a fatal crash on Florida’s Turnpike caused by a foreign-born semi-truck driver to incite fear about immigrants driving on American roads.

Despite President Donald Trump’s penchant for inflaming public opinion, there is one thing his administration might have gotten right: In April, he ordered the enforcement of a longstanding U.S. law, not enforced since 2016, that requires commercial vehicle drivers to meet English proficiency standards or be taken off the road.

The move came on the heels of Trump signing a March executive order declaring English the country’s official language.

Here’s the difference between those two actions: The latter is purely nationalistic red meat for Trump’s base and it accomplishes little beyond making people feel excluded for speaking a different language. The former is about safety and requiring professional drivers to have enough language skills to perform a high-stakes task — though it would be naive to assume the president’s intentions are only to keep roads safer.

Trump has attacked immigrants who are here both legally and illegally, treating them as a blight on communities despite evidence that, for example, immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born residents.

Trump has done everything to make the lives of immigrants harder. But it is not necessarily anti-immigrant to expect that truck drivers read road English signs and warnings and communicate with highway patrol. Driving an 18-wheeler involves more risks and responsibility than driving a sedan, which is why getting a commercial driving license is harder in the first place.

“The vast majority of professional drivers meet these [language] requirements and take pride in their responsibility to keep America moving safely. But allowing bad actors to bypass the law undermines that commitment and threatens the credibility of the entire system,” American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear wrote in a Tuesday statement.

At the same time, Trump’s order could embolden officers intent on taking away an immigrant’s livelihood by quizzing them on their language skills. It could also hurt the country’s trucking industry, which is essential to the transportation of goods to all corners of America. As he’s shown with his tariffs, Trump doesn’t mind inflicting havoc on the U.S. economy to achieve his goals.

It’s unclear if language skills, or the lack thereof, had anything to do with the Aug. 12 Turnpike crash in St. Lucie County. Driver Harjinder Singh, who’s from India, has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and manslaughter. He attempted to make an illegal U-turn through an “official use only” access point, blocking traffic and killing three people after a minivan struck his truck, according to authorities. You don’t have to speak English to understand such a maneuver is dangerous.

After an assessment following the crash, the U.S. Department of Transportation says Singh failed an English language evaluation, answering only two of 12 verbal questions correctly and accurately identifying only one of four highway traffic signs. But video from a July traffic stop in New Mexico showed no “communication issues between Mr. Singh and the officer,” state police wrote in a news release. Although he spoke with a heavy accent, he appeared to understand the officer’s instructions.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is using Singh as the justification for a crackdown on blue states. This week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government could withhold $50 million from California, New Mexico and Washington unless they adopt English proficiency requirements for commercial truck drivers.

A spokesperson for Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, where Singh got his commercial license, accused the administration of “scrambling to shift blame.” The federal government calls Singh an “illegal alien,” and Florida authorities said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018. However, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported that Singh got his most recent federal work permit in April, under Trump, and had an ongoing asylum case.

Trump’s record of weaponizing tragedies involving immigrants is a sad reality, and Americans should not get caught up in Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric. But, at the end of the day, drivers with proper language skills are probably safer for our highways, and that’s not a bad thing.