Florida’s English-only driving test a challenge for Spanish Speakers : NPR

Johannes González, an instructor at Speedway Driving School in Hialeah, Fla., teaches Spanish-speaking students to memorize key words in order to pass the state’s new English-only driving test.

David Ovalle/NPR

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David Ovalle/NPR

HIALEAH, FLORIDA – Alex López, a construction worker from Guatemala, gets by on construction sites with broken English. He knows the tools and knows how to follow his boss’s instructions.

“My French no es muy malo” said López, 41. My English is not too bad.

But López does not master the language well enough to obtain the right to legally drive in Florida. He recently bombed a 50-question multiple-choice driving test administered in English.

“After they gave me instructions and taught me how to use the computer program, I froze,” López said in Spanish while studying at the Speedway driving school in Hialeah. “I felt sick.”

Florida has long allowed drivers like López to take tests written in Spanish. In line with President Trump’s hard line on immigration, Republican-led Florida in February began requiring written and oral tests for new drivers only in English, without the help of a translator.

López’s fight illustrates the new obstacles facing aspiring drivers under the rule change, particularly in heavily Hispanic cities like Miami and Orlando.

The move makes Florida one of only a handful of states to require English-only driving tests – and by far the largest and most diverse. According to U.S. Census data, about one in three Floridians speaks a foreign language at home.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles instituted the rule less than a year after a commercial truck driver made an illegal U-turn. killed three people on the Florida Turnpike. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) hailed the rule as a “good reform.”

The Trump administration and state Republican leaders have highlighted the case as evidence that immigrant truckers with limited English skills pose a threat on the roads.

“If you don’t know what the road signs say, you’re more likely to have a car accident that puts us all in danger,” said Florida House Rep. Berny Jacques (R-Seminole), who supports the requirement.

Jacques, born in Haiti, pointed out that Floridians voted in 1988 to make English the official state language. The new driving test rule, he said, will push immigrants to assimilate.

“It’s easy to feel comfortable when you’re in a situation where there are a lot of people from your own community. You can spend your whole life going about your business and doing business without ever speaking English,” Jacques said.

Critics insist the move unfairly targets Hispanics and other minority groups — and that there is no data showing that drivers who are not proficient in English are more dangerous.

English-only testing will push people to drive without a license in a state with poor public transportation, said Adriana Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“We’re going to create a class of people who will be criminalized for something as simple as picking up a prescription,” Rivera said.

The policy would harm Orlando’s large Puerto Rican population, some of whom may have limited English proficiency, she said.

Perhaps nowhere in the state is as affected by the new rule as Miami-Dade County, which is majority Hispanic. Spanish is widely spoken, as is Haitian Creole. The rule went into full effect in April.

English-only requirements have a history in Florida

The debate over language – and what it means to be American – is not new to Miami.

When Cuban refugees invaded Miami in 1980 after the Mariel Lift, the county passed a controversial ordinance broadly banning the use of taxpayer dollars for programs conducted in languages ​​other than English.

Cuban-American leaders in Miami, such as Manny Díaz, succeeded in getting the law repealed in the early 1990s. Díaz, who later became mayor of Miami and chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said he was disappointed by the state’s new requirement for English-only driving tests.

“My first thought was, ‘My God, I thought we were done with this,’” Díaz said.

Miami-Dade County has thrived precisely because of its many languages, and the new rule was an unnecessary product of Republican fear-mongering, he said.

“It makes life unnecessarily difficult for people,” Díaz said.

This is clear at Speedway Driving School, which serves Latin American immigrants who have moved to the United States and must drive to work, transport their children to school or to the grocery store. It’s in Hialeah, a sprawling, traffic-choked city populated mostly by Cuban Americans. In Miami-Dade, there are many schools like this.

Memorization and Keywords Help Non-English Speakers

On a recent Saturday, eight students crowded into a small classroom with road signs adorning the walls. Their stories represented a microcosm of the Miami experience. A man left Colombia two weeks ago.

Another student, Yaima Fuentes Pérez, 41, arrived from Cuba a little more than a year ago and got her green card just after the English-only rule took effect. A former journalist in Cuba, Fuentes said she needed her license to take accounting classes.

She would have liked to be able to take the test in Spanish.

“I understand that I live in the United States and English is the dominant language – but I also understand that there are many Latinos living in this country, particularly in Florida,” she said in Spanish.

Yuri Rodríguez, owner of Speedway Driving School in Hialeah, Florida, says fewer students are signing up because they’re afraid of failing Florida’s English-only driving test.

David Ovalle/NPR

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During the course, instructor Johannes González used revamped lessons he had been working on for months. He knows he cannot teach English fluently in a series of short courses. Instead, he teaches primarily in Spanish, but works to get students to memorize key English words and how they might appear on the test.

González created a Power Point with sample questions and charts. Many English words share Latin roots with those in Spanish, he reminded them. Speed. Speed. Pedestrian. Peaton.

“Maximum highway speed, right? Seventy miles an hour. Te lo pongo in English, es más o menos igual. Maximum,” he said, explaining in a mix of Miami Spanglish.

Classes last longer now. More and more students are failing the exam on the first try, González said, which is why the school charges them a flat fee so they can attend as many classes as necessary.

Students over 50, in particular, have difficulty keeping up with their classes, he said. Yuri Rodríguez, the school’s owner, said fewer students were enrolling. “Everyone is afraid of not passing the exam,” she said.

This Saturday, students saw mixed results. After weeks of studying, Fuentes passed the written exam, missing only one answer.

López, the construction worker from Guatemala, failed for the second time. He’s back to school.