Blog 10 - The Reality of a Bilingual America

Affinity Spanish, a Spanish language services company has recently begun bilingual employees recruiting services. Basically, they gather data on bilinguals searching for jobs and refer them to US companies which need bilingual English-Spanish speaking employees. Apparently Affinity Spanish’s services are in fairly high demand because the need for bilingual English-Spanish speaking employees has grown significantly during the past years, for a couple of reasons. First, American companies are trading ever more with Latin American counterparts, and these bilingual employees can help easily and gently bridge cultural and language related divides. Second, and I think more importantly, the ascendance and growing economic importance of the Spanish speaking population in the United States demands that companies cater towards this population’s needs. This ever-growing importance suggests that in some ways the US is becoming a bilingual nation.

As is, the United States is home to the 5th largest Spanish speaking population in the world, and it’s only growing. Over 600,000 immigrants come to the United States every year from Spanish speaking countries. According to a Berkley professor, “the state [of California] predicts that the school population will be majority Latino by 2008” and most of these students will be Spanish speakers (although I’m not sure if I should believe him since he’s from Kal). More and more, the Spanish language is becoming a prominent feature of the American landscape. However, several American groups seem unable or unwilling to accept this reality.

Although English Only groups have existed in the United States for decades, they now have more power and influence than ever before. Essentially, these groups hope to designate English as the nation’s official language and to deny people the right to have government services provided in any language other than English. This policy seems to only have detrimental consequences. Like it or not, the reality of the situation is that there are people in this country who don’t know English. By ignoring them and by not providing them with basic services like health care, they won’t go away. They will only suffer.

These English Only proposals don’t help anybody. As Al Gore said, “Everyone knows English is the language of the United States. ‘English Only’ laws only seek to divide our nation.” Americans need to come to terms with the reality of foreign languages, particularly Spanish, within the United States and they need to accept the fact that the use of these languages will only grow. English-speakers should use the influx of foreign language and the increasing prominence of Spanish as an opportunity to broaden their cultural horizons. Rather than fighting against this trend in futility, Americans need to adapt and embrace it.

See you all tomorrow,

Prananda

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/25406/
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/28/143049.php
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/Castro1.htm
http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa070300a.htm
http://www.us-english.org/inc/about/
http://www.englishfirst.org/
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/engonly.htm