A Stitch in Haste

If you oppose making English the official language of government in the United States, then you must, by corollary, support actions such as this:

Officials are now having to lay off some of the bosses who manage [Oregon] firefighting crews because the bosses are not bilingual. Many of the newer hires in Oregon only speak Spanish.

"What we do know is 85 percent of the crew makeup is of Hispanic descent," said Jim Walker, with the Oregon Department of Forestry.

The state said all bosses must speak the same language of their crew on the fire lines for safety reasons. They want to make sure that the leader of the crews can quickly communicate during an emergency if the fire turns or if there is another problem on the fire lines.
...
So why couldn't the state require that these crew members speak English? The state doesn't have a clear answer.

Notice that the article did not say "85 percent of the crew are recent immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries." It said "of Hispanic descent." There's a difference.

And this is not Texas, Arizona or New Mexico. It is Oregon, which is only 8% Hispanic according to the 2000 Census. One can only imagine what new rules might be imposed in more heavily Hispanic states under this twisted logic.

Given that firefighting is a public good, and that the purported concern here is over "safety," then the correct approach would of course have been to pay enough to recruit English-speaking firefighters in the first place, not to settle for cheaper non-English speakers and then create "collateral damage" among the even more skilled fire bosses by laying them off or demoting them for not having a skill which no reasonable person could consider "necessary" to the position of fire boss. It would be akin to firing them for not knowing how to ride a horse or play the oboe.

Stated differently, how hard is it to find a raw recruit firefighter, and how hard is it to find a veteran, expert fire boss? Which should therefore be the one accommodated and whose retention should be prioritized?

Of course "safety" is a necessary component of "public safety." Which is precisely why the inability to speak English is something to be proscribed in such occupations, not accommodated.

(Via Fark.)