Challenge of English in the USA.docVIP

January 25, 2012 NY Times Arizona Candidate Challenged Over English Skills By MARC LACEY SAN LUIS, Ariz. — When Alejandrina Cabrera speaks English, her face takes on an expression somewhere between deep discomfort and outright despair. Her tongue, which darts around her mouth in her native Spanish, slows to a crawl. “I speak little English,” she said in a hesitant and heavily accented interview in her lawyer’s office. “But my English is fine for San Luis.” Mrs. Cabrera may be able to get her point across in English, but whether she is proficient enough in the language to serve on the governing board of this bilingual border city has deeply divided the 25,000 residents. What began as an effort by political opponents to block Mrs. Cabrera from the ballot for a seat on the City Council has mushroomed into an uncomfortable discussion of just how fluent Arizona officeholders need to be. Like many other states, Arizona has long required politicians at all levels to speak, read and write English, but the law fails to spell out just what that means. Is grade-school knowledge enough? Must one speak flawlessly? Who is to decide? “I do feel this opening a box of Pandora, and we don’t know where it’s going to lead,” said Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla, who filed a legal challenge of Mrs. Cabrera’s English ability. He acknowledged on local television that his own English was far from perfect. “I feel I don’t dominate 100 percent, but I can still get by,” said Mr. Escamilla, who graduated from the same Arizona high school as Mrs. Cabrera. “I can write, read and understand it very well.” It was Guillermina Fuentes, a former San Luis mayor, who first raised Mrs. Cabrera’s English skills as an issue last month. Former friends, the two women had a political falling out. “You’re hearing my broken English,” Ms. Fuentes said in a telephone interview. “I know people have a hard time understanding me at times, but I understand the language and I was the one always interpreting for Ale