a serious situation that should never have been permitted in the first place;

Although he spoke English when he was enrolled in a truck driver training program, Kevinson Jean, a Haitian immigrant, recalled feeling self-conscious during his commercial driver’s license exam.

{snip}

He recalled classmates from Iran who didn’t speak English fluently but still passed their exams. “Nobody could understand them, but they passed,” he said.

They and other truck drivers will now be subject to roadside English proficiency tests. On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy officially signed a directive for his department to take truck drivers off the road if they are not fluent in English. The directive puts into effect an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on April 28.

Trump’s order changes the penalty for violations of the law, which for decades has required that, as a qualification to be a commercial motor vehicle driver, a person must “read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.”

The Obama administration had relaxed the penalty from taking drivers off the road to being issued a citation.

{snip}

After Trump issued his order, the American Trucking Association thanked him in a statement for “responding to our concerns on the uneven application of this existing regulation.” The association named it its No. 2 concern in an April 10 letter to Duffy. {snip}........more.......