If you haven't heard yet, a candidate for City Council in San Luis, Arizona, a border town on the Colorado River (and just east of the California border) near Yuma and Calexico/Mexicali, has been removed from the ballot because her English wasn't good enough. One more reminder of the impact of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase -- the citizens we acquired between 1848 and 1853 spoke Spanish, and they became Americans when the border was moved. But never mind that when the English Only people are involved. How did we get here? Follow me below the widget for a brief explanation.
Yes, the English-Only movement has been more successful than you think. Although Tom Tancredo and Steve King have been unsuccessful in getting a bill through the House, some states like Arizona have passed them. The authority on this is Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, who provides a summary of the Arizona law in his blog:
Arizona's first English-only law, passed in 1986, forbade the use of any language other than English by a public official, from the governor down to municipal sewer workers. After it was ruled unconstitutional the state passed a less-restrictive law, in 2006, that provides that official actions, like the Census banner [in 2010, Prescott, AZ tore a Spanish language banner down], "shall be conducted in English" and prohibits discrimination against anyone for using English, though it's not clear that a banner constitutes an official government action, and there are no recorded instances of anyone ever being discriminated against for using English.
The Yuma Sun reports that Alejandrina Cabrera failed a series of tests given by a sociolinguistics expert (they do not, as the New York Times does, mention that said expert is a professor at Brigham Young) . They observe that the case is in court because the Mayor of San Luis, Juan Carlos Escamilla, brought suit to keep Ms./Sra. Cabrera off the ballot, and that Ms./Sra. Cabrera participated in two attempts to recall the Mayor.
It's difficult to unpack this, especially in a border town where Spanish is the lingua franca. The law obviously makes primary Spanish speakers second class citizenship in Arizona, but I wonder if this isn't more a political vendetta than an attempt to enforce a questionable law.
At any rate, it's more unpleasant news for Arizona, where the First Amendment is in trouble.