Say Anything Blog

Common sense invades the court room.

  A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.

  The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.

  The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.

  “Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” the judge asked them.

If they don’t comply with the judge’s orders they go back in the can for two years.

Now, if the judge had just limited the conditions of their parole to “get educated” and “get a job” there wouldn’t be any controversy.  Those are things that will help them re-integrate with society and lead prosperous lives.  But the “learn English” party is setting people off, though I can’t for the life of me figure out why.  After all, in a society where English is by far the dominant language, it is one heck of a lot easier to get a job and become prosperous if you’re speaking the same language as everyone else.

I don’t think many of us would expect to be able to move to Mexico, or France for that matter, and have a lot of job options available if we didn’t speak the local language.

But that probably makes too much sense.