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DEL.ICIO.USWhy is it so hard to find a cabbie who speaks English?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She left the message on a reporter’s voice mail.
“Hello, my name is Sylvia Booker,” she began. “I need help finding a taxi cab in my area that’s licensed, reliable and [with a driver] who speaks English.”
Booker’s 1999 Buick Le-Sabre is being repaired. She said a woman with “wonderful insurance” backed into it at a gas pump on Monday. Since the Buick would be ready any day now, the Norcross widow decided to bide time.
“I said, ‘Heck, I just need a way to get back to the collision center when my car is finished,” she told me. “So I called all these taxi cab numbers in the phone book.”
Most of the phone numbers were either disconnected or out of service. When she did get a live person on the line, he or she didn’t speak English. Booker, 75, a retired IRS tax examiner, doesn’t speak Spanish.
In Gwinnett, a local law requires taxi drivers to speak enough English to understand traffic signs, a passenger’s request and how to write a receipt. It also requires drivers to show a green card or other proof that they are allowed to work in the United States legally. In 2009, taxis can’t be older than eight years.
When I talked to Booker, she didn’t come across as a xenophobe. All she wanted was a taxi driver who spoke English. Ethnicity didn’t matter. Yet she couldn’t find one.
“I have no idea why it’s like that,” she said.
Of course, free market and free enterprise dictate. Latino-owned and operated taxis are expected to flower in Gwinnett, home to thousands of Hispanics, many carless.
According to latest figures from the county’s licensing and revenue department, 61 licensed taxis currently operate here. Cursory observations tell me a majority are Latino. Cool.
A question begs to be answered, though. Whatever happened to the native-born taxi drivers and independent operators? It’s as if they’ve vanished, vamoosed, never existed.
It’s a question worthy of posing in regards to other areas, too — construction, lawn maintenance, restaurants, county and state road crews. Hispanics appear to dominate certain jobs. Maybe it’s employer preference. Yet they comprise a mere 17 percent of the county population.
Apparently, there’s an economic and social dynamic at work that’s bigger than my little brain can comprehend. It’s bigger than you and me and the role we play in this mess of a county.
Maybe you can explain it to me. Booker, too. And save that tired tripe about Latinos embracing jobs that Americans reject. I don’t buy it.
Gut instinct tells me something, though. Whatever the reason for the dynamic, its surge in Gwinnett isn’t an altogether blessing or benefit for the majority of us. Hispanics included.
Booker’s condo is a five-minute drive from my office at Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Best Friend Road. I offered her a ride.
• Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@ajc.com.
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Comments
By Michael H. Smith
September 2, 2007 12:46 PM | Link to this
Among the native born profitability, inherent personal danger and market size is probably some of the reasons you see few English speaking cabbies, Mr. Badie. As Gwinnett becomes more urban, market size might make it worth the risk for native born or naturalized English speaking citizens to venture out into the cab business.
Your cursory observations are right on target, along with the phone calls referred to in the previous blog on this very same subject which concludes the dominance of Spanish speaking cabbies in the taxi business serving Gwinnett County.
According to U.S. census data as of 2006 showing roughly 61 percent of Gwinnett’s population as white, 16 percent as black and 14 percent as from the Spanish speaking culture – Hispanic – a conundrum of sorts would rule out market size as a reason behind this lack of English speaking cabbies. However, it is more “the nature” of the market size being served that is really at play here, where in a word this riddle becomes unraveled: Legality. Among the roughly 80 percent black and white population legal status is nearly unquestionable, meaning we can obtain a Georgia drivers license. Among the 14 percent so-called Hispanic population, if some best guestimates hold true, better than 50 percent of that population cannot obtain a Georgia drivers license because of legal residency status alone. Therein lays the majority difference in the nature of the taxi market being served reflective of the demographic breakdown. There are of course other side issues for the Spanish speaking, legal and illegal, involved as opposed to the English speaking legal residents that are non-existent.
The dominance spoken of in other areas of the employment market is definitely linked to preference. This preference, though, is often rooted in money and money being obtained in violations of the law, contrary to labor supply availability. It was interesting taking the facts revealed from the previous Badie blog on this same subject, how, once the county began to place conditions on the licensing of taxis the drastic reduction that took place in the number of Gwinnett’s Hispanic cab companies.
Thanks for that evidence, Mr. Badie. It only underscores my previous comments that professional and occupational licensing laws are a “just cause” means unto a righteous served end, and that they actually work to eliminate at least some illegality from what has become a very corrupted system, of a very “bad prejudice” set against the employment of U.S. citizen workers.
http://www.americanworker.org
By Barbara Vickroy
September 2, 2007 3:08 PM | Link to this
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times stated that in the greater LA area, Asian immigrants have found that Spanish is the “survival” language to secure employment, not English. My experiences with clerks who can’t speak English range from fast food outlets to department stores to home improvement stores, but the best illustration is when my friend Jesse Laguna and I went to a local high school to check out a textbook used in a new,new math course. We asked directions to the library from a young Latino couple enjoying one another’s company in a way not possible when we oldsters were in school. My query in English got only blank stares. Jesse asked in Spanish and we got directions in Spanish. As we walked away Jesse - WW11 & Korean vet - said “only in American”.
By LB
September 3, 2007 5:29 PM | Link to this
I have a couple of comments and questions totally unrelated.
Why does Sears at Gwinnett Place Mall have announcements that are in Spanish?
Why is there a sign at the Home Depot on Shakleford road in the lumber department written in several languages with none in English?
How does a 17 year old illegal get a learners permit to drive?
How do illegals find work and why do people still employ them?
Who rents or sells to these illegals?
These are all real examples that I have seen first hand of how America shoots themselves in the foot.
Most of this discrimination against Americans are from Americans themselves. If everybody quit treating illegals like gods and giving the shirts off their backs, the inconvenience alone would make illegals leave on their own. No jobs, no free govt. aide, no rentals for places to live, no Western Union sending USD to Mexico or any other country for that matter. Illegals should get only temporary housing similar to that of disaster victims waiting to go back to their destinations. Food lines from charities and emergency medical aide should be available to them but only temporarily until they can get back to their own country.
Last but not least, any company that is open to the public in America that doesn’t speak English should be investigated to see if the owners and workers are legal. If not, deport them and have the people who gave them a permit to set up shop on American soil pay a heavy fine.
We as Americans are to blame for most of this mess created with the illegals. We as Americans can reverse the problem very quickly by enforcing the law and quit playing host to people who are not supposed to be here. If we start today we can see results in as little as a month because if there are no jobs there will be no illegals.
One parting statement, whoever said the illegals do jobs Americans won’t touch are dead wrong. I know many Americans, myself included, who will take any job in order to get off the unemployment line. What a terrible insult to the American people who are unemployed, willing to do any job but can’t get a job due to the fact illegals are filling certain industries.
The cab industry for an American company could easily trump the foreign taxi companies and take a lot of business. The sign would only have to read Se Habla Ingles.
By Michael H. Smith
September 3, 2007 6:27 PM | Link to this
Well LB, George W. Bush, our President, said the illegals do jobs Americans won’t touch; though, in slightly different words, nevertheless, in message and meaning, George W. Bush went to that very unforgivable insulting extent on many occasions.