President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday requiring all of the truck drivers in America to be proficient in the English language, following his designation of English as the official language of the country in a separate executive order in March. As a result of the EO, reports The Hill, Transportation Secretary and former Real World/Road Rules cast member Sean Duffy will issue new guidance on proficiency testing and enforcement policies for truckers. If a driver is found in violation of the executive order, they’ll be put “out of service.” Here’s the thing — federal law already required truckers to be proficient in English, and drivers need to prove their proficiency as a condition of obtaining a commercial driver’s license. This seems like little more than another Trump policy aimed at harassing and detaining law-abiding Americans and exacerbating an already crisis-level trucking industry problem.
Ostensibly this week’s executive order was crafted to make the highways of the United States safe from the scourge of native Spanish and Punjabi speakers conversing in their most comfortable language. It specifies that drivers “need to provide feedback to their employers and customers and receive related directions in English.” Federal law already requires all commercial driver’s license candidates demonstrate they can “read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, understand highway traffic signs and signals, respond to official inquiries, and make entries on reports and records”. So what good is this executive order?
Truckers already know English
In 2016, as part of an anti-racism policy effort, the Obama-era Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration removed its own requirement to put drivers out of service for failing to maintain federal English Language Proficiency rules. The FMCSA specified that the requirement was removed from its rulebook because they “could not substantiate the safety impacts” of the rule. This policy is specifically reversed by Trump’s new EO, despite commercially licensed drivers needing to pass a physical exam, a drug test, prove they’re in the country working legally, and the ability to pass a written knowledge test, a driving skills test, and a road test, all conducted in English, while driving on U.S. roads with all signage in English. These new Transportation Secretary requirements will potentially harm drivers’ ability to make a salary for an as-yet-unknown Duffy-specified infraction.
Will drivers lose their jobs for speaking to each other or to dock workers in their native language? Will trucks be programmed not to play foreign language music, or prevented from providing route instructions in any language other than English? If a driver has the kind of stellar safety record required to maintain a CDL and continue to be hired for hauls, the load arrives to its destination on time and intact, does it really matter what language they feel most comfortable speaking? Truckers have already proven they understand, read, and write the English language, even if they don’t regularly use it in daily conversation.