Check this out:
Hospitals lack interpreters
Every day, thousands of Spanish-speaking residents race to Valley emergency rooms only to find no one who can speak their language.
Most hospitals lack formal interpreter programs, even though they are required by federal law to provide such services. Instead, they rely on bilingual family members, off-site telephone translation services or staff members who must interpret sick patients' symptoms in addition to doing their regular jobs
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This doesn't surprise me a bit...I worked for city government for years and we began to receive more and more calls in Spanish. Nobody in the office spoke Espanol--I didn't know it was a required subject--until finally it was decided that the next employee we hired would have to be bilingual. I guarantee you: in the next ten to twenty years, Spanish will become a required subject in public schools (although requiring Hispanics to learn English will still be off-limits; not 'sensitive' enough to their 'culture'.)