How good does your English have to be?

I recently came across the following storyline, and have been following it with some interest:


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/us/arizona-candidates-english-under-challenge.html?pagewanted=all

The short version is this: Alejandrina Cabrera is in the midst of a legal battle because she is being barred from running for the San Luis City Council because her English isn't good enough. Cabrera speaks English as a second language, but is far from fluent. Which raises some questions: Given that English is not the official language of the US, how good does it have to be in order to participate in government? And who decides what's good enough?

 San Luis is an Arizona Town (pop. 25,000) on the Mexican border. In fact, many of its residents hail from the "other" San Luis, just on the other side. According to the article, Spanish is the dominant language of the town, with bits and pieces of English thrown in.

I plan to use this article in a future class to ask my students what they think: In a town where most of the residents speak Spanish, should a potential civic leader be disqualified, not for not speaking English, but for apparently not speaking enough? How much is enough? And what should be the standard for determining enough.

I think there is some good material here for discussing the difference between a dominant language and an official one -- Official being required by law; dominant just being what the majority speaks -- and a good debate question: Should English be the official language? The "English Only Movement" is nothing new in politics, but it's interesting to see how the roles of language and government clash here.

Has anyone else been using or following this?