Jayson Sarmiento-Ramon

Enid Brain

English 11000

2 December 2025

Cover Letter

My audience is the lawmakers of our state and country. I tailored my language and rhetoric to appeal to them by explaining how exactly the current laws to protect immigrants from experiencing language discrimination are flawed. I also used specific examples that varied in how the language discrimination happened, proving that it is a big problem in New York City and that it can take shape in many different ways. By showing how customers and employers were both the discriminators, I was able to demonstrate that the discrimination experienced by immigrants is numerous, which is why enforcement should be higher than it currently is. If people, such as the supposed lawyer, a person who knows the law, who threatened calling ICE, think they can get away with saying such racist remarks, it indicates that they are not scared of the system in place because they know that what they say will not have any repercussions, which is a self-explanatory problem. By describing how I felt by using strong adjectives, I was able to appeal to the emotions of the lawyers, which was another one of my goals. 

The most meaningful insight I have gotten after having written this synthesis essay about language and literacy is that the presence of a Spanish or Latin American accent when speaking English is often treated as a sign of being less qualified to hold a job, which leads to discrimination in hiring and job interactions with employees or bosses. Although laws do exist to protect workers from language discrimination happening in the workplace, these laws are far too subjective and are poorly enforced, allowing employers and customers to act irrationally and often hatefully toward employees and customers who are not deserving of such treatment. 

The concept of audience has most impacted my learning throughout this essay. I am writing to lawmakers, so understanding how they think is important to writing an effective essay critiquing laws that are in place. For example, knowing that there are laws that exist to protect immigrants from experiencing language discrimination helps me build on those laws to explain how exactly those laws are subjective. Additionally, knowing my audience also means that I know that lawmakers have the power to change laws by editing them and by showing how the current laws are flawed, which I did through various real-world examples. I hope to have an effect on the lawmakers’ thinking about the laws I have addressed in this essay. In a sense, laws are much like statistics in the sense that when you give faces to the laws, like statistics, they become personal, which is my goal. 

Additionally, evidence is another concept that has impacted my writing practices. The assignment requiring multimodal evidence allowed me to integrate different types of evidence in a way that flowed and made sense, which I did by first introducing laws and then providing multimedia sources that showed how these laws are broken and how the laws being broken might not even be breaking the law because of how subjective the laws presented are, showing the problem at hand.

Language discrimination against Latin American Immigrants in NYC’s service industry

New York City is full of restaurants and other industries that make up the service industry. Demographically, the city also has a rich Latin community throughout all five boroughs. These two are related because this specific community makes up a substantial amount of the service industry in New York City. Unfortunately, the truth of being a Latin American service industry worker is one plagued by low wages and unstable hours, but there is another less mainstream con of being a Latin American worker in the service industry: experiencing accent discrimination. When Latin Americans speak English with an accent, that accent is sometimes looked down upon in the eyes of both employers and customers. This linguistic bias negatively affects the chances of a Latin American in many ways, such as lowering the chances of them being hired for not speaking standard English. Ultimately, in New York City’s service industry, the accents of Latin Americans when speaking English or their non-English speaking capabilities are used as a basis for discrimination, and this bias is unfortunately allowed to happen because of conservative ideologies of language and weak enforcement of laws made to protect people from accent discrimination.

There exist legal protections for immigrants that prohibit discrimination based on language, although they are subjective, which creates problems for the employees. The EEOC, which stands for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, enforces anti-discrimination laws in the United States. Under Title XII, the formal law that enforces anti-discrimination laws in the workplace has a part that focuses on national origin discrimination. This type of discrimination is characterized by discrimination against a language, showing that the law protects against language discrimination, which falls under national origin discrimination. Also, employers are not allowed to not employ someone because of their accent, unless their accent severely inhibits their ability to do the described job (EEOC, 2016). Thus, there are existing protections to protect immigrants and others from accent discrimination. However, there is a serious flaw with this law: the law is subjective. This allows companies to technically be allowed to fire someone because of their accent, even if their accent is minimal, due to the reasoning that they, the employers, deem the accent to be too thick. The NYC Commission on Human Rights more specifically protects immigrants explicitly on the basis of their accents, which the Commission also deems as a form of national origin discrimination, just like the corresponding federal law. The NYC Commission on Human Rights additionally takes what the federal law says a step further by not just being against accent discrimination, but also being against discrimination based on the speaking of a different language other than English, which, in theory, should protect immigrants who do not speak English even more than the federal law (NYC Commission on Human Rights, 2025). However, it is important to know that while these protections exist on the city level, they have many of the same enforcement problems that enforcing the corresponding federal law has. There are accent-based decisions, such as job assignments or firing, that could very much be legal discrimination, but would be argued by the employer to be a simple decision that is not based on accents but on other factors. Employers, then, are favored by the laws created. Although the case could be made that making accent laws too strict would make employees unfirable by employers, which would present a big problem, I think the law has to be clearer and not so subjective. Ultimately, these immigrants in the service industry in NYC are people whose livelihoods are at stake, and employers have too much power in the current system due to the subjectivity of the law.

Accent discrimination is rooted in deeper ideologies tied to one’s speaking capabilities, as perceived by the greater population. Whether we like it or not, there are perceived notions people have of us, depending on how we speak. Likewise, we have perceived notions of other people depending on how people speak, which may be done consciously or unconsciously. Regardless, it is important to accept that these notions exist and thus also affect other things, such as employment, especially for immigrants who do not speak English with a standard accent. Employers are known to use customer preference as a justification for their detrimental decisions against employees with accents, which is technically protected by the law. However, employers are hiding, whether on purpose or not, their bias for supposedly accent-less people as compared to people who speak with accents. The way immigrants with accents speak is ultimately seen as less professional by employers and potentially by customers because of existing notions tied to the way one speaks, which can be observed through accents, as argued by employers in some cases.  Even if immigrants speak in a way that one can clearly understand what they are saying, just by virtue of their different accent, the immigrants are already at a disadvantage (Green, 164-66). Although discrimination against immigrants with accents when speaking English can be done unconsciously, it is still a form of discrimination, and the law should be working to protect these immigrants, not go against them. 

Accent discrimination happens in New York City in the service industry and is experienced by many ethnicities, such as Latinos and Latinas. In 2018, a male customer at a Fresh Kitchen franchise was being extremely discriminatory toward workers who were speaking Spanish with customers and each other. The male was white and also remarked that the workers are immigrants who live off the welfare he pays. He made it clear that speaking English is the minimum they, the immigrants, can do, and that speaking Spanish should not be allowed. The manager of the Fresh Kitchen said that what initiated the white man’s rant was when a customer ahead of him began ordering in Spanish. When confronting the man, he said he was highly educated and that she should go back to her country, when she was born and raised in New York City. How ridiculous! He then threatened to call ICE to report the employees (ABC7, 2018).

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Rant against Spanish-speaking restaurant workers goes viral

The video really shows just how much service industry employees in NYC who do not speak English and who are of Latin descent go through in dealing with discrimination. At the root, the accent discrimination for Latin immigrants who speak English comes from the hatred of non-English speaking Latin immigrants, which is why this example is powerful and adds context for future, specific accent discrimination examples. In another example, at a Goodwill on West 25th Street, a lady and her friend were kicked out for not speaking English but for speaking Spanish. The victim, Bruna Miguel, is of Honduran descent and does not speak much English. Although this was the case, she still tried her best to speak English. She asked an employee in her non-standard English to show her a wallet that she wanted to buy, but when she began speaking Spanish in front of the employee to her friend, the employee demanded that she stop speaking Spanish. The employee then said that Bruna had to leave if she kept speaking Spanish. When the employee called her manager over, Bruna tried to explain the situation to him, but it was difficult due to her limited English-speaking abilities and accent. The manager, however, ignored her complaint and demanded that she leave the store, to which she did so against her will. Even with her limited English and accent when speaking English, she still tried to explain herself one last time before she was removed from the store by two guards who were ordered to do so by the manager (dnainfo, 2017). 

The Goodwill on West 25th St

The situation is alarming because the unforgiving nature of some people demonstrates that even when Latin American immigrants try to speak English, simply because of their accent, they may still be harassed. She was close to being a buying customer, as evidenced by her asking for help with the wallet. However, the employee and the manager did not care. The golden rule of the retail industry is that the customer is always right, and another important rule is that employees must do what is in their power to make sure a sale goes through. The store employee and manager broke these rules because the woman spoke Spanish, and English with an accent. This shows that discrimination is experienced in the service industry, not just by employees, but also by potential consumers, highlighting that accent discrimination in the NYC service industry is a real problem that needs urgent addressing. 

Alarmingly, it seems like Latin Americans in some workplaces are the main targeted group of immigrants experiencing language discrimination, which raises the question of whether they are targeted for being immigrants in general or for being Latin American specifically. In a Sephora store located that was located in Rockefeller Center until it closed in 2002, five women filed a suit through the EEOC suing Sephora because of the “English-only” rule that Sephora bosses were enforcing. Employees who spoke Spanish were not allowed to speak Spanish when working or during breaks, and were often mimicked and ridiculed by their bosses because of their accents when speaking English. The representative for the EEOC who was filing the claim stated that Latin Americans were targeted in particular, while people who spoke other languages in the same Sephora were allowed to speak their languages without any obstruction or ridicule from bosses (ABC News, 2003).

Sephora at Rockefeller Center

This specific discrimination targeted at Latino and Latina immigrants is disgusting and adds a new element to language discrimination experienced by Latino immigrants in the NYC service industries: Are they targeted for being immigrants in general who have accents or do not speak English, or for being Latin American specifically? I would say it is a mix of both. 

Unfortunately, many Latin American workers in the service industry in NYC are treated unfairly because of their accents or because they do not speak English well, according to the opinions of others, such as employers or consumers. This discrimination has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen because of strict views about how people should speak. It certainly does not help that the laws that exist to protect people from experiencing language discrimination are not enforced well. As lawmakers, you have the power to strengthen enforcement and make sure every worker is treated fairly, no matter how they speak.

Works Cited

ABC.7 (2018). CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Rant against Spanish-speaking restaurant workers goes viral. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26MDmt1UfaU

ABC News. (2003). English-Only Work Rules on the Rise. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=89889&page=1

dnainfo. (2017). Woman Booted from Goodwill Store for Speaking Spanish, Complaint Says. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170301/chelsea/discrimination-25th-street-goodwill-human-rights-commission/

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2016). EEOC Enforcement Guidance on National Origin Discrimination. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/eeoc-enforcement-guidance-national-origin-discrimination

Lippi-Green, Rosina. “Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts.” Language in Society, vol. 23, no. 2, 1994, pp. 163–98. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168513. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

New York City Commission on Human Rights. (2025). Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Immigration Status and National Origin. https://www.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/immigration-status-and-national-origin-legal-enforcement-guidance.page