Second Class Citizens

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Second-Class Citizens

Speak English or prepare to be fired -- without benefits. Sounds loco, Virginia.

Monday, January 28, 2008; Page A20

VIRGINIA SEN. Ken Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax) has introduced a piece of immigrant-bashing legislation that is meant to ease the way for bosses to fire workers who don't speak English. But the bill is so closed-minded and foul-tempered that it is too much for Mr. Cuccinelli himself. It would victimize employees who fail "to speak only English at the workplace," a formulation even the senator now allows is a bit harsh; who knows, maybe his own ancestors were known to utter a phrase or two in their native Italian on the job. So he has decided to remove the word "only" from his bill. Nice, but it doesn't help.

The senator, long regarded as among the more intolerant lawmakers in Richmond, has outdone himself. He says glibly that the bill responds to a growing problem of employees who are unfit for their jobs because they speak English poorly. The rub, he says, is that employers cannot fire them without risking higher taxes to pay unemployment benefits. His evidence? Well, says the senator, an employer complained to him about it. And who was that employer? Mr. Cuccinelli can't recall.

The senator's porous memory notwithstanding, his legislation highlights a few pertinent facts about the immigration debate:

First, xenophobia. Despite their protestations, the anti-immigrant crowd tends to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants and tar them with the same brush. Although Mr. Cuccinelli spent much of his campaign for the state Senate last fall bashing illegal immigrants, this bill would apply only to legal immigrants, since illegal immigrants are already ineligible for unemployment benefits.

Second, overzealousness. Mr. Cuccinelli's bill rates poor English as an offense on a par with substance abuse, lying about past criminal convictions, missing work and committing infractions that cost an employer his business license -- all of them equal grounds for denying unemployment benefits to a fired worker. That's absurd on its face.

Third, blame-shifting. Clearly, it is an employer's responsibility to hire workers whose skills match the job. Yet Mr. Cuccinelli's bill would perversely penalize workers, not employers. This is grossly unfair.

Immigrant-bashers, even some who pay homage to America as a nation of immigrants, have a rich and ugly history in this country. Today, a venomous new chapter is being written in that history by lawmakers of Mr. Cuccinelli's ilk, for whom the very presence of people whose language, culture and values are different is a firing offense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...isrc=newsletter

[pedroh 21]

muy mal, muy mal...

[peejay 327]

...tends to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants...

And the illegal alien cheerleading squad doesn't?

Oh please! Gimme a break. If I had a dollar for all the times I've seen or heard the word "illegal" conveniently omitted in their self serving deceptive propaganda I would be a rich man.

[Amby 490]

do it! I hate it when guys I work with speak spanish and then look at me and laugh! I pick up a few words but then I just give up

[almaty 19]

virginia use to be for lovers..now, for lame chopf##k...a stupid no chance law made by stupid idiot,...........

VIRGINIA SEN. Ken Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax) has introduced a piece of immigrant-bashing legislation that is meant to ease the way for bosses to fire workers who don't speak English. But the bill is so closed-minded and foul-tempered that it is too much for Mr. Cuccinelli himself.

[annelizabeth 1]

ay! que pendejo!!! jejejje

[SteveLaura 0]

Multi-lingualism needs to be punished. All right-thinking citizens know this.

[Scott & Lai 12]

...tends to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants...

And the illegal alien cheerleading squad doesn't?

Oh please! Gimme a break. If I had a dollar for all the times I've seen or heard the word "illegal" conveniently omitted in their self serving deceptive propaganda I would be a rich man.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

...tends to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants...

And the illegal alien cheerleading squad doesn't?

Oh please! Gimme a break. If I had a dollar for all the times I've seen or heard the word "illegal" conveniently omitted in their self serving deceptive propaganda I would be a rich man.

Right on! Illegal is usually left out of the headline and buried sheepishly in the story.

[almaty 19]

ay! que pendejo!!! jejejje

hola hermano .........

[maya62 7]

Here is the link to the bill in question:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?081+ful+SB339

And here is to another he sponsored that caught my eye:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?081+ful+SJ131

[john & jean 37]

If they do not speak english, then the non english speaker that hired them should also be fired. I would bet my next pay check that this azz whole has employed more than one non english speaker. Many people forget the only true Americans are the American Indians. As for the rest of us, we are all immigrants, aliens who came here from all over the world. We forced the only true Americans to speak a language that was FORIEGN. If more time was spent on trying to fix our badly broken immigration laws, and less time spent on ####### like this, which is obviously meant to gain the attention of the popular vote then maybe the number of people illegally in this country will start to decline. However most of our politicians only concern themselves with popular politics. Until we, the voters boot people like this out, there will not be any changes... john&jean