Bill Targets Workers Who Speak No English

Cuccinelli said he drafted the bill after a business owner approached him last year and complained that his unemployment taxes rose after he fired someone who didn't learn English.

"They had an understanding the employee would improve their English capabilities, and that didn't happen," Cuccinelli said. "We are an at-will employment state, but there is a question about having to pay more unemployment insurance."

Terminated employees are ineligible for unemployment benefits if they fail a drug test, falsify a job application with respect to a criminal record, commit an act that causes the employer to lose his business license or miss too many days of work. A claim can also be denied if the employee violates a "reasonable company law" and has "a pattern of misconduct that shows a willful disregard for an employer's legitimate business interest," Walsh said.

Gonzales said Cuccinelli's bill is not needed because Equal Opportunity Commission guidelines give employers the right to terminate employees for their language skills if their jobs require extensive interaction with the public or a need to understand basic safety information.

Immigrant rights advocates say Cuccinelli's bill is too broad. It says "an employee's inability or refusal to speak English at the workplace, in violation of a known policy of the employer, constitutes misconduct."

Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a lobbyist for the Virginia Coalition for Latino Organizations, said the bill would make it too easy to fire someone who is not a native speaker of English.

"This says, if they are on their break in the backroom, you can tell them they can't speak Spanish or German or you can fire them and also deny them unemployment," Gastanaga said.

Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, said Cuccinelli's bill shows how some Virginia lawmakers want to "take a bite at immigrants at all levels and hope they go away."

"People lose their language after they've been here a number of years, but it takes years. It doesn't take days," Kelley said.

Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), who last year pushed through an effort to cut off public services in Prince William for illegal immigrants, said Cuccinelli is tapping into the mounting public concern about illegal immigration.

"You hear that frustration a lot, especially up here in Northern Virginia," Stewart said. "I do understand the frustration that the general public and probably employers have with such a large portion of the workforce being unable or unwilling to learn English."

If people lose their jobs because of his bill, Cuccinelli said, they would just "have to get another job."

"If they can get one without speaking English," he said.