The use of phrases like "This is Alabama; we speak English. If you wanna live here, learn it" and "It'll save us money" make it blatantly clear that this is nothing more than racism and xenophobia -- or at the very least, pandering to those subgroups within Alabama. And I think I might actually be more disgusted by the latter.
For the most part, roads are a universal language. My father traveled all over the world when he was young, and did more than his fair share of driving on all kinds of roads, including ones with street signs written in languages with letters he didn't know existed until that point. This includes the Autobahn in Germany, which may as well be an F1 track -- and he drove there in winter.
Shape, color, numbers, everything about road signs is designed to be such that you can be at the pre-school level of a language and still drive in a country that doesn't speak your language. People who argue in favor of this are ignoring the simple logic of the matter -- a driver's test will contain full sentences and explicit instructions. Road signs contain one or two words. In twenty minutes to an hour you could memorize all the words you would ever need to recognize to drive competently in a country, and I'm astonished that people haven't considered this fact.
And there are other, more obvious factors, too. If people immigrate to America and cannot speak English, you take steps to condemn them to poverty if you refuse them the right to drive. What would be accomplished by this, exactly? People aren't going to stop moving to America and Alabama with such enclavish policies -- they won't bat an eye. All you accomplish is making their adjustment and recalibration to their life in America as difficult as possible. Welcome to America, but sorry, you can't drive your kids to school or drive yourself to work. Please don't turn to crime, though! I'm sure you'll be fine!
Since I know the well-being of immigrating families isn't a concern to some, I'll address your backyard, as well. Arbitrarily stripping freedoms from non-English speaking families and individuals will make their adjustment to their new life arbitrarily difficult. If adequately impoverished by these roadblocks, they become more likely to shack up in ethnic slums, which makes all concerned more likely to become involved in crime and gangs. These introduce a slew of costs that are already exorbitantly expensive, such as the American prison system and an ever-increasing need for more police officers. And don't get me started about the courts.
Meanwhile, if the immigrants manage to avoid the pull toward crime, poverty is still incredibly likely, and worsened by these arbitrary blocks. Social security comes to mind. Picture this bill in a grand scale, across the entirety of the United States, and imagine how an inability to drive would impact incoming immigration. You can bet your *** there would be a more than substantial increase in Social Security applicants, and the majority of the qualified recipients would be family units.
What was that about saving money, again?
