KTRH -- Texas Senator Insulted Testimony in Spanish

KTRH -- During committee testimony this week in Austin, a Texas senator interrupted a Spanish speaker and telling him he should "be speaking in English" during a committee hearing.

Antolin Aguirre of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition was testifying against Senate Bill 9 that would help crack down on illegal immigrants in Texas. Aguirre spoke through an interpreter even though he had been in the U.S. since 1988.

Two minutes into Antolin Aguirre's testimony, Sen. Chris Harris, a Republican from Arlington, interrupted asking Aguirre's interrupter, "Did I understand him correctly that he has been here since 1988?" Harris asked. "Why aren't you speaking in English then?"

Read more: http://www.ktrh.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=121300&...

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• Spanish
• Antolin Aguirre
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• Sen. Chris Harris
• Roger Hudson
• Houston's Morning News

[forestcats]

My Italian father grew up bi-lingual. He served in the U.S. Army and landed in Normandy on Omaha beach. He came back having defended our nation and refused to ever speak Italian ever since. He was the first of his family born in the USA and demanded that they let go of the old world and respect the USA.

I have had great difficulty getting full time employment in factories in Quality Departments because I am not bilingual in Spanish here in Southern California.

[Coolins335]

I agree with the senator, if the reverse were true and an American were living in Mexico since 1988 he would be expected to speak Spanish.

[XxLIVRAxX]

@lilnikkanam I do have a bit of Native American blood in my gene pool, not significant enough for my to claim a native identity (am certainly not the avenger of Cuathemoc or Tupac Amaru), but there it is..

[XxLIVRAxX]

@ShinigamiReika That was exactly what happen to Tejanos, Anglo immigrants settled on northern Mexico, most of them without clear permission of the local government and eventually took Texas for themselves, am sorry, but technically, English speakers were the foreign aliens who invaded Mexico.

[lilnikkanam]

@XxLIVRAxX as far as I am concerned, unless you are Native American...you are all illegals

[suny123boy1]

@ShinigamiReika

I thought they had to take the citizenship test. Isn't that whole thing in English too?

[suny123boy1]

@24xEBK

Not racist or anything but I don't think languages that have male and female gender are the best. Save it and don't tell me it's a romance language.

[suny123boy1]

@ShinigamiReika

Exactly. I agree completely. I had a retail job once and someone started speaking Spanish, and I was like , "Wait a minute, what? I can't understand what you're saying."

[ShinigamiReika]

@XxLIVRAxX Hmm, i could care less about race, find it such a poinless bother, racism is just so pointless to me. I do find that given the place and that the language spoken there is English, it would be respectful to speak the same language. You don't go to another country's court system and seak some other language, its just not done!

I counld give a damn less if you were from Mexico or the damn Phiippines, you come here illegally your breaking the law!!! Sheesh!

[XxLIVRAxX]

@dorindamiles Go home to England...you see, we can play that game to, BTW, Canadians and Mexican north americans, therefore the term American is applied to them, we should start using the "Unesian" when refering to a US citizen, It was a 19 century term propose to define a US citizen, I think we should bring it back.

[XxLIVRAxX]

@JJxMxP When you talk about Spanish you are actually referring to a European people that inhabits the Iberian peninsula and are Caucasian, the proper term would be Hispanic, a more general term

[XxLIVRAxX]

The statement that this man is making is simple, by speaking Spanish, the first indoeuropean language spoken in the region and a fifth essential element in Texan (Tejano) identity, "El Paso", "San Antonio", "Corpus Christi" (Latin actually), names that BTW are terrible pronounce by English speakers, he us saying that Spanish is part of texan history and culture as same as French is part of the history of Canada and Louisiana, and therefore should be cooficial with English.