Do Tourists Have to Speak English, too?

July 17, 2019

A few months ago I saw a post on Facebook that said a man was harassing a woman who was talking on the phone in a foreign language. “Go back to Mexico,” he said. She said, “I was speaking Navajo. If you want to speak English, go to England.”

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it made me wonder if people are harassing tourists to our country when the tourists are speaking in their native language. If so, what is the effect of all this hostility going to do to the tourism industry?

I frame the question in a dollars and cents context, because that seems to be what gets the attention of the movers and shakers in our government; not, “You’re harassing innocent people,” but, “Hey, your actions are costing us money.”

I hope that the possibility of losing income, if not humanitarian reasons, will motivate our leaders to discourage the harassment anybody who isn’t speaking English.