HIALEAH, Fla. — Construction worker Alex López, 41, a native of Guatemala, gets by on jobs with broken English. He knows the tools and follows directions, but he hasn’t mastered enough English to pass Florida’s written driving exam. He recently failed a 50-question multiple-choice test given only in English.
“Mi inglés no es muy malo,” López said. “After they gave me instructions and taught me how to use the computer program, I froze. I felt sick.”
Florida long allowed written driving tests in Spanish, but in February the state began requiring written and oral tests only in English for new drivers, without translator assistance. The change, enacted by Republican leaders and framed by the Trump administration’s hardline immigration rhetoric, took full effect in April.
The rule makes Florida one of the few states to require English-only licensing exams — and by far the largest and most linguistically diverse. About one in three Floridians speak a language other than English at home. Critics say the policy erects a new barrier for immigrants in cities like Miami and Orlando, where Spanish and Haitian Creole are widely spoken.
The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles adopted the rule less than a year after a commercial truck driver making an illegal U-turn killed three people on the Florida Turnpike, a case cited by supporters. Gov. Ron DeSantis praised the move as a “good reform.” “If you don’t know what road signs are saying, you’re more likely to get into a car accident that puts all of us in peril,” Florida Rep. Berny Jacques (R-Seminole) said, backing the requirement. Jacques, who was born in Haiti, also noted that Floridians voted in 1988 to make English the state’s official language and said the change will encourage immigrants to assimilate.
Opponents argue there’s no evidence limited English proficiency makes drivers more dangerous and that the rule will push people to drive without licenses in a state with poor public transportation. “We’re going to create a class of people that are going to be criminalized for something as simple as picking up a prescription,” said Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. She added the policy will especially affect Orlando’s Puerto Rican population and other communities with limited English proficiency.
Language debates are not new in Florida. After the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Miami-Dade County adopted an ordinance restricting the use of taxpayer money for programs in languages other than English; the law was later repealed. Manny Díaz, a Cuban-American leader who served as Miami mayor and chaired the Florida Democratic Party, said he was disappointed by the new test requirement. “My first thought was, ‘My God, I thought we were done with this,'” Díaz said, adding that Miami’s multilingual character has been central to its success.
At Speedway Driving School in Hialeah, which serves many Latin American immigrants who need licenses to work and care for families, the new rule is tangible in day-to-day struggles. Owner Yuri Rodríguez said enrollments have fallen because people are afraid they won’t pass.
Instructor Johannes González has redesigned lessons to cope with the new reality. He teaches primarily in Spanish but focuses on getting students to memorize key English words and how they appear on the test. González uses PowerPoint sample questions and points out English words that share Latin roots with Spanish: velocity — velocidad; pedestrian — peatón. He tells students to learn likely test phrasing: “Maximum highway speed, right? Seventy miles an hour. Te lo pongo en inglés, es más o menos igual. Maximum.”
Classes have lengthened and more students fail on the first try, so the school charges a flat fee that lets learners attend as many sessions as needed. Older students — especially those over 50 — struggle more with the new format, González said.
On a recent Saturday, eight students squeezed into a small classroom with road signs on the walls. Their backgrounds reflected Miami’s diversity: one man arrived from Colombia two weeks earlier; Yaima Fuentes Pérez, 41, came from Cuba just over a year ago and received her green card after the English-only rule took effect. Fuentes, once a journalist in Cuba, said she needed a license to attend accounting classes and wished the test were available in Spanish. “I understand I live in the United States and English is the dominant language — but I also understand there are many Latinos who live in this country, especially in Florida,” she said in Spanish.
After weeks of study using González’s methods, some students saw progress. Fuentes missed only one question on the practice test and later did well on the written exam. López, however, failed for a second time and returned to study. The changes have left many learners relying on memorization and keyword recognition to meet a requirement that had previously been available in their native language.