Posted on 07/10/2002 12:57:16 PM PDT by Schatze
Police officers and firefighters, sworn to serve and protect, sometimes find it difficult to communicate with the Spanish-speaking victims they're trying to rescue. But the growing demand for emergency responders to communicate in Spanish is "political correctness run amok," according to some conservatives.
"If a fireman or a policeman or someone happens to speak the language and can help someone, more power to them," said Jim Boulet, Jr., the executive director of English First, an organization dedicated to making English the official language of the U.S.
"But [speaking Spanish] is a courtesy, it's not a legally enforceable right," Boulet said.
However, according to Dr. Sam Slick, president and CEO of Command Spanish, Inc., "the country's largest provider of occupational Spanish training," teaching emergency responders to communicate in Spanish fills a "very important need."
According to Slick, the United States has millions of either Spanish-only speakers or those that are "limited English proficient," which he defined as "primarily Spanish speakers with a very small amount of English."
"How do you attend to those needs in any kind of conceivable way?" Slick asked.
Command Spanish offers clients, including "many local, state, federal and private agencies" a curriculum that is "workplace specific," Slick said.
"We teach firefighters how to control fires and crowds and save people's lives at a fire scene, but we don't teach them fruits and vegetables," Slick said. "We don't teach them how to arrest people, because firemen don't arrest people. We teach them only what they need to know."
In some cases, Slick said it's mandatory for emergency responders to learn Spanish.
For example, Slick said, the State of Texas mandates that its police officers learn to communicate in Spanish as a requirement for their intermediate police certification. Command Spanish offers customized Spanish courses to both the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Probation Academy for an undisclosed fee.
"It generates an awful lot of money," Slick said of Command Spanish's local, state and federal government contracts.
Records Closed
When asked just how much money Command Spanish earns from its government-funded contracts, Slick said "those records are closed," assuring CNSNews.com that "It's a very lucrative business."
"Some of the money being spent for all of this mandatory translation would buy a ton of English classes," English First's Boulet said. "The government is sending the message, 'If you come to America, don't bother to learn the language. We'll tell you everything you need to know.'"
Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, explained that there is "no law which requires an individual - even if they do acquire a functional ability to read, write and speak the English language - there's no law that requires them to use English.
"In terms of our people having to have an ability to speak Spanish, I think the need for that is obvious," Bergeron said. "If you can't speak their language, then obviously it becomes very problematic from a law enforcement standpoint."
Roy Beck, the executive director of Numbers USA, a public policy group in Washington that studies the annual numbers of legal and illegal immigration, wants to know why only the Spanish-speaking immigrants get this "extra consideration" from the police and firefighters.
"In every city, there are dozens of immigrant languages being spoken. In some cities we're talking about 120-140 languages," Beck said. "All these other people are being really ripped-off."
Tim Richardson, a senior legislative liaison with the National Fraternal Order of Police, said the current preference for Spanish stems from the fact that it's the second most spoken language in the United States.
"In general, I think [learning Spanish] is going to make the officer a more valuable person to his community, so it's a good thing," Richardson said.
But Richardson said local and city police departments should be cautious when considering mandatory Spanish courses, especially if the order is coming down from the federal level.
Richardson has no objection to such a mandate if "it's a decision reached by the state and funded and the officer is not forced to buy his own Spanish lessons.
"You're, in a sense, arming that officer with that tool," Richardson said of teaching police officers Spanish.
Richardson said police departments should first determine their personnel and equipment needs before spending money to train several or all officers in a second language.
"I think it's probably, in many cases, unrealistic to expect every officer to be bilingual," Richardson said.
Copyright CNSNews.com
I've known a lot of first generation immigrants: Polish, Dutch, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, German ---and all but the Hispanics learned English quite well. In fact I've never heard Indians speaking their own language and for some odd reason they seem to do well economically. I think someone should learn a basic level of a language even to travel to a foreign country. It takes about 6 months if you try.
In my opinion, that's probably true. Hispanic immigrants are different from most others in our modern era, in that they tend to have very low levels of education.In fact, they are more traditional in that sense, because first generation immigrants almost NEVER had a working knowledge of English. Second generation is usually bilingual in the TRUE sense--knowing both languages with equal facility--and the third generation and so on usually know only English.
You can whine about that all you want, but that's the way it's been for about three hundred years.
Interesting. Would you mind showing me chapter and verse where you get this from? And how you define "command"?
And there we have it folks...the Bottom Line. The Almighty Dollar. How can we make some dough off of these ignorant immigrants?
Teach 'em English? Hell no! Let's not kill the goose that's laying them there golden eggs!
Do you suppose there's any chance that Command Spanish has had people lobbying State Legislatures and the like to get appropriate laws passed to make their service more marketable? I do.
But then, I'm a little more cynical than most. All right, a lot more cynical.
In my opinion, that's probably true.
Racist.
I'm surprised at you, FITZ. Whether we agree or disagree, you usually are on top of this kind of thing. Do you not know that India is a bilingual country? That because each state speaks it's own language or dialect, English is the official language of business there? And that all children learn English from a very early age?
As for the Euros, most of them DO learn English, as it has also become lingua franca, but they learn it before they come here. In bygone generations this was not so.
I know plenty of asians, and the first generation typically has no "command" of English, unless they studied it very early in school. Most Vietnamese speak TERRIBLE English, because they tend to be a very insular community; I even know some second-gen VN who aren't that great with English because of this.
In Korea, English is taught in school from the earliest grades.
In my opinion, that's probably true.
My next-door neighbors were from Mexico and spoke Spanish at home, they enrolled their 4 year old in an all English speaking preschool so he could learn English. School started the end of August, by Halloween the kid was speaking English very very well ---I know because he came trick-or-treating with us. Hispanic immigrants including adults can learn English. To imply only white adult fireman and policeman can learn another language well but certain immigrants cannot is racist.
You can disagree with me without making a mockery of the process.
And how does the fireman know that they are Hispanic if he cannot communicate with them and they simply look at him as if he had three heads?
What if they are a Croatian couple? Or Greek? Or French? Or Italian? Or Russian? Or Romanian? Or Korean? Or Japanese? Or Chinese? Or Pakistani? Or Swedish? Or...or...or...
Do the firemen now have to take profiling lessons from the FBI or should they just run down through the 50 languages that they should be required to learn?
This is true. If you live in an area where a lot of Spanish is spoken, then learning it would be very practical and make you more of an asset to your employer.
However, I worry about the growing power of groups behind these kind of movements to mandate capitulation to anything Spanish or Mexican. There are those "Liberate Atzlan" La Raza types who see me as an intruder in my own homeland.
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