Trump is wrong. My father's English lack did not prevent him from being a great trucker

When Donald Trump signed an executive order last week, in which truckers did not speak the best English, there was an industry expert that I had to call: my father.

Lorenzo Arellano drove great rigs through South California for 30 years before retiring in 2019. His six -day work weeks kept us well with the vehicle and clothed and allowed him to afford a house with three bedrooms with a swimming pool in which he and my youngest brother still live today.

“Why does this crazy man want to do that?” He asked me by phone in Spanish before answering his own question. “It's because [Trump has] Always had a lack of respect for the immigrant. We truckers don't deserve that. He just tries to harm people. He wants to humiliate the whole world. “

Federal regulations that punish the migration background for their limited English editions dates from the 1930s. The order of Trump calls for an existing requirement that truckers are dominating English, and has a 2016 guideline that should not cite or suspend inspectors Troqueros As long as they could communicate sufficiently, including an interpreter or smartphone app.

For a long time, the conservatives have associated the fact that the Obama era campaign and the rise of migration developers now make up 18% of the profession, according to the number of people's numbers to a significant increase in fatal accidents in the past ten years, to which Trump has indicated that “America's roads in America have become less secure”.

Trump's move is the youngest dog who is aimed at people who do not like that the United States are not as white as before. It follows similarly xenophobic actions, such as the explanation of English as the official language, the strictly limited citizenship and the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico “Golf of America”.

However, the push of English-for truckers shouted me particularly up. Provided that a various more truck industry is the main culprit for the increase in fatal truck accidents, ignores the fact that there are more trucks on the street and drive more miles than ever before. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the deadly falls are three times less than in the late 1970s, as cultural test stones such as “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Convoi” brought the image of the good old White Boy Trucker into the American psyche.

It is also an insult to people like my 73-year-old father.

When I was high in Junior, Papi took me with me at the weekend to teach me the value of hard work. He would wake me up at 2 a.m. so that I could cut loads on flat beds while cooling in the morning or reloaded a pallet sockets at lunchtime. I don't remember how he spoke anything other than Spanish, in the language in which we have always communicated. But he succeeded enough that all four of his children are trained in college and have full -time jobs.

His dream was that we both finally open our own father-son trucking company. This never happened because I was too a nerd, but I was always proud of my father's career. It enabled the American dream, although he came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy with an apprenticeship in fourth grade and only included what I always described as a rudimentary understanding of English.

I visited my dad the day after our call to see the only two memorabilia that he could dig out of his career as a truck.

One was a curved, blurry photo of him from the early nineties with his first rig, a faded red GMC Cabover, which he parked behind my business of my Tía Licha so that he did not have to pay a private property. Papi, younger than I am today, is at the side of the Troca The workers who unload it are waiting in the Placentia Home Depot. He doesn't smile because the Mexican old school never smiles for the camera. But you can see from his pose that he is proud.

The other Memento Papi showed me that it was a badge that was from a truck trading group in 1991. It congratulated him on “Credit for her profession” and “the best thing to offer your industry”.

“You would only exist the safest driver,” he said while I held it. We were sitting in his living room, where photos of my late mother and children decorated the bookshelves. He smiled. “I deserved many of them.”

I asked how he learned English that he knew. Papi replied in Spanish that his first lessons were in his first job in the USA, a carpet cutter factory in Los Angeles. The owners teached the Latino workers how to run the machines, but also enough sentences so that the immigration authorities would leave them alone in an attack.

Otherwise my father lived in a world of EspañolMy mother tongue. When he married my mommy and moved to Anaheim, she convinced him that she should take English lessons at night to improve her prospects. He only stayed with it for two years: “Because I worked a lot.”

When he was training as a truck driver in the mid-1980s, the instructor spoke Spanish, but said everyone that they had to learn enough English to understand traffic signs and pass the DMV test.

“And that makes sense, because these are the United States,” said Papi. “But that's also southern California. Everyone knows a bit of English, but many people also know a bit of Spanish.”

I asked how much English he used for the job.

“Maybe 50%,” he replied. “Why will I say a lot if that is not true?”

He recited the sentences with which dispatchers and security forces picked him in English at every stopover:

What are you coming for?

Which company do you work for?

Who is the broker?

What is the address?

Do you have a driver's license?

He slowly repeated every question – and your corresponding answer – slowly as if he wanted to conjure up a time when he was younger and happy to finally find his professional groove.

“You listened and understood me, even though I spoke Chueco y Mocho,He said crumbs and broken. That was loud, my father became uncertain.

I asked if someone ever made fun of his English.

“No,” he suddenly said happily. “Because trucker, we are a brotherhood.”

Papi rattled all immigrants with whom he had worked on his truck days. Russians. Armenian. Arab. Italian. “They did not know Spanish. I didn't know their language. So we had to speak English to become friends. Everyone knew a little.”

In fact, he remembered what the immigrants looked like down About people who spoke perfect English.

“The person who does not speak English works harder. He does not run away from work. Those who spoke English well worked less because they thought they know English, made them so powerful. When the boss said:” Who wants more changes? “The English spokesman said:” Why do I want to work late? “And run to your houses.”

I asked Papi if he regretted not knowing English.

“No. What is done.”

Then he took a moment to think. “Look, study is for people who like it like you. But not me. Maybe I could have had a better life.”

He interpreted through our family house. “But we had a good life. I did what I had to do.”

My father was not the most responsible man in his personal life, but trucking ground him. I thought of how he and so many other truckers sacrificed self-improvement things like English lessons in the name of the work at work. I remember all the inspections that my father's rig had to go through – he never failed – and how he continues to blame me if I rely on my rearview mirror instead of my side mirror when I retire. As almost every time we see each other, he reminds me of checking the oil and the air pressure in my tires.

Truckers are some of the most cautious people they hit because they know how dangerous their profession is. For transport secretary Sean P. Duffy zu Huff in a press release that his department “will always put the American truck drivers in the first place” – as if people like Papi are somehow not belonging to this group – is hateful and ignored what this country is really about. Or what this country really is about.

My father and I were waiting for a Times video editor to take up our truck days. Towards the end, I threw out an idea: How about he addresses Trump in the name of migrant truck drivers … in English?

There was no way in a chic black, leather vest and its best boots that dad would happen. He looked directly into the camera.

“Mr. Trump,” he said. “This is Lorenzo Arellano, 100% Mexican. Please respect the truck drivers. We always work hard. … it doesn't matter whether you don't speak English. You have to be good workers. I guarantee!”

His severe accent was not so safe, apologetically – even polite – despite his rejection of the president.

“You speak a little English,” said Papi about his truck Compad. “Don't need much English. I hope you hear this conversation. Thank you, Trump. Do something for us.”

I joked the camera that this was my father who supposedly did not speak English.

“Todo Mocho. Todo Chueco“He said again.

In other words, perfect.