Opinion for The Latino Newsletter

CHAMPAIGN, Illinois — President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that requires the enforcement of existing rules requiring truck drivers to read and speak English in order to operate commercial vehicles.

The order claims existing rules haven’t been enforced in years, making the nation’s roads less safe. It gives Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy 60 days to come up with revised inspection procedures to make sure existing rules are enforced.

While no one would disagree that Americans deserve safe roads, this order —if hastily enforced— risks causing collateral damage to the immigrants that make up close to 20% of the truck-driving population, without necessarily improving anyone’s safety.

Translating commonsense rules into language policies that actually improve truckers’ and everyone’s safety requires expertise. Otherwise, the order’s broad and vague terms risk being used as more blunt instruments in the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant push.

As a professor of Spanish with more than 30 years of experience, who also specializes in languages for specific purposes (LSP), I see within this executive order the possibility to create language training and assessment that address the truckers’ specific communicative needs. However, without the hand of expert language professionals, the result could be capricious punishment of anyone perceived to be a non-native speaker of American English. 

As a field of study, LSP researches and teaches the language used within highly targeted scenarios. For example, universities offer courses with any number of combinations of languages and professions, such as business Chinese, German for engineers, Spanish for veterinarians and many more.

Many community colleges, with their close ties to local workforce demands, offer customized language education tailored to specific trades or work site needs. This training can be targeted to English speakers who work with English language learners or vice versa.

To transform President Trump’s executive order into practice requires at least three steps.

1. Professional definitions of “proficiency” must be used. Specific levels and criteria are provided by TESOL and by the Common European Framework of Reference. Otherwise, negative attitudes toward non-native speakers, conscious or not, can create biased results. As a 2024 review of the literature states, “Language attitudes play a crucial role in interpersonal communication.”

2. A needs analysis should determine truckers’ required language abilities. For example, LSP educators in the U.S. do not teach health professionals to write hospital documents because those are always written in English. On the other hand, healthcare workers do need the language skills to explain medical information to non-English speaking patients and to understand their responses and questions. In other words, a general conversation with a trucker in English would not reveal whether they can do their job safely or not.

3. Cultural knowledge and intercultural competence must be developed alongside the language testing. For example, some cultures signal respect by not looking someone in the eye when they speak. Someone from the U.S. who rates truckers’ English proficiency might misread that behavior as disrespect or inattention, simply because they don’t understand the cultural context.

If approached with these steps in mind and with the aid of LSP professionals, this executive order could achieve its stated goal of improved safety.

However, recent actions by the Trump administration and longer-term trends in language education cloud that possibility.

For example, the deep cuts that Elon Musk and DOGE made to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) contradict this executive order’s emphasis on worker safety.

The capitalization in the executive order emphasizes the words “Nation,” “Administration” and “Federal,” tinging the document with nationalist sentiment. Assessing language proficiency must be a neutral act, disconnected from political leanings and the rampant anti-immigrant sentiment of this moment.

Finally, the Trump administration’s ruthless attacks on higher education and its funding threaten the expertise in fields like languages for specific purposes that contribute to workplace safety as well as the general economic well-being of the United States as one thread in the web of global enterprise. For instance, the University of Chicago offers training in the kind of LSP needs analysis required for this executive order, but is also among the many colleges under federal investigation, which puts all programs under threat.

For language programs specifically, such existential threats are not new. In 2023, the Modern Languages Association released its report on language enrollments, which shows an overall steady decline and recommends strengthening languages for specific purposes. Furthermore, DOGE slashed the federal office that provides federal support for language learning and research.

A truly commonsense approach to languages in the workplace would encourage language study in this country, properly resource language programs and recognize that our country’s multilingualism is an asset. That would create the conditions not just for worker safety but for our country to flourish.

About the Author

Annie Abbott is an Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.

Donate to Us

We want to keep The Latino Newsletter accessible without paywalls. To help, you can donate here. Any amount (one-time or monthly) will keep us going.

And now a word from our sponsor for today’s newsletter post.

Seeking impartial news? Meet 1440.

Every day, 3.5 million readers turn to 1440 for their factual news. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you a complete summary of politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a brief 5-minute email. Enjoy an impartial news experience.

Join for free today!

What We’re Reading

Latino Consumers Not Spending? From NBC News, “Hispanic consumers are cutting back their grocery spending on everything from beer to cooking spray, executives said during recent earnings calls.”

The Latino Newsletter welcomes opinion pieces in English and/or Spanish from community voices. Submission guidelines are here. The views expressed by outside opinion contributors do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this outlet or its employees.