(Ricky Carioti/ The Washington Post ) - Chef Victor Rojas, left, a Mexican immigrant, and owner Graham Baker work Feb. 23 in the kitchen of La Paz Mexican Restaurant in Frederick, Md. The two men said the county’s new law declaring English its official language was silly.
On a bustling street in downtown Frederick last week, a group of businessmen chatted in rapid Spanish inside a new Cuban restaurant. Down the block, two Mexican-born painters listened to peppy Latin music on the radio as they touched up a storefront’s facade.
Ten miles east, in a community of aging dairy farms, a recently opened Hispanic church stands next to an old barbershop. Across the street, signs in a McDonald’s restaurant urge customers to “relax and savor,” in both English and Spanish.
Amid such signs of change — driven by a rapid influx of mostly Hispanic immigrants that has brought both vibrant development and social tensions — the Frederick Board of County Commissioners last week adopted an ordinance making English the county’s official language.
The law declares that “the use of a common language removes barriers of misunderstanding” and enables all residents to obtain “full economic and civic participation.”
“We’re just stating the obvious,” said Blaine Young, a business owner and a Republican who heads the county board. He compared the law to others that made milk the official drink of Maryland and the Baltimore oriole the official state bird. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he said.
But critics say the ordinance, which requires all non-emergency dealings with the county government to be transacted in English, sends a message that is standoffish and discriminatory. Some say it could drive away investment and tourism. Others see it as a futile effort to hold back the tide of change.
Hispanic population boom
During the past decade, the population of Frederick County has grown 20 percent. By far, the greatest growth has been in the Hispanic population, which grew by 267 percent and accounts for 7.3 percent of the county’s population of 233,000, which includes the city of Frederick.
“I don’t see why this is necessary . . . it’s embarrassing,” said Graham Baker, 57, who owns La Paz, a Mexican bistro in Frederick, and employs more than a dozen Hispanics. “They’re all loyal, hard-working folks,” he said. “I can’t get high school kids to wash dishes anymore. Things are changing, and people have to get used to it.”
Victor Rojas, 48, Baker’s Mexican-born kitchen manager, studied English in high school but has forgotten most of it.
“I know I should learn,” he said in Spanish sprinkled with a few English phrases. “I work all the time to support my wife and children back home. There is no time to study.”
The ordinance is not expected to have a dramatic impact because it exempts health, safety and emergency services from having to be conducted in English. Politically, however, it stakes out new ground in a long-term effort by some conservatives to make Frederick a pocket of resistance in a liberal state that has welcomed Hispanic immigrants and been lenient toward those who are not in the United States legally.
A news release from Young’s office noted that Frederick is the first Maryland county to make English its official language. It is also the only Maryland jurisdiction to make a formal agreement with federal immigration authorities to turn over suspected illegal immigrants who are arrested. Since the program took effect in 2009, more than 700 illegal immigrants have been caught, police said. Neither policy is in effect in Frederick city, which has its own government and police force.
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