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
Now, my wife is the REAL expert in all of this, because she's the one with the Master's in Bilingual Education. And she and I disagree on that point, because I think "immersion" is best.
Most of her students--she teaches Second Grade--have parents who are low socioeconomic class. They barely have education themselves, and they are slow to recognize the benefits of education for their own children. That is another way that they are different from earlier immigrant populations.
But we do know some Hispanic immigrants who are well-educated, and even though the parents don't speak English very well--most middle- and upper-class Mexicans learn English in school--they make sure their kids learn it. Not doing so puts the children at a disadvantage; that's why most Hispanic immigrants want their own children OUT of bilingual ed classes (another point of controversy between me and my wife) and in English classes.
So the idea that "Hispanics don't care about English and want everyone to cater to them" is just plain WRONG. Most do. But most are also in their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc., and not well-educated even in Spanish, and they just are NOT going to learn English with any degree of proficiency.
And that's what has to be recognized without sounding like silly bigoted Know-Nothings.
Wrong. It is required to have a WORKING KNOWLEDGE of English, that's all. I have a "working knowledge" of Spanish, for that matter.
I agree completely. I, personally, would go so far as to say that Freedom of Speech means that no one should be required to learn any language if they don't want to.
After all, silence is golden.
"The firemen turn and look at one another, shrug, squirt their hoses on the fire till it goes out, then leave."
"Or how about this? The firemen, realizing there's no way to know for sure, plunge into the burning building frantically looking for anyone who might be there."
Wow, those are shockingly ignorant statements.
This one is best.
"Unlike the usual situation, they don't even know who might be there, so they have to look throroughly."
That is exactly the usual situation. We hardly ever know if there are people inside a burning structure. Even if there is someone there to tell you they think there is no one inside, you still have to conduct the operation as if there may be some one still inside, because they could be wrong.
"The firemen turn and look at one another, shrug, squirt their hoses on the fire till it goes out, then leave."
"Or how about this? The firemen, realizing there's no way to know for sure, plunge into the burning building frantically looking for anyone who might be there."
Wow, those are shockingly ignorant statements.
This one is best.
"Unlike the usual situation, they don't even know who might be there, so they have to look throroughly."
That is exactly the usual situation. We hardly ever know if there are people inside a burning structure. Even if there is someone there to tell you they think there is no one inside, you still have to conduct the operation as if there may be some one still inside, because they could be wrong.
Alarm comes in to station, Fire & Rescue 1 & 2 respond. Within minutes of the alarm first going out, they arrive on the scene, to find two bewildered-looking middle-aged people, man and woman, sitting on the curb, weak from smoke inhalation.
The firemen begin shouting at them: "Anyone in there? Is there anyone left inside? Children? Old folks?"
The dumb Korean couple, who haven't bothered to learn English, just as generations of immigrants before them did not, look at them without comprehension.
The firemen turn and look at one another and ask the Chinese neighbors, if they know if anyone is in the house, and they look at them without comprehension and shrug. So the firemen squirt their hoses on the fire till it goes out, then leave.
Later, the charred remains of three children and the grandmother are found in the rubble.
That'd be acceptable to you, though, right?
Or how about this? The firemen, realizing there's no way to know for sure, plunge into the burning building frantically looking for anyone who might be there. Unlike the usual situation, they don't even know who might be there, so they have to look throroughly. Meanwhile, the fire burns out of control, and the Firemen suddenly have to make a frenzied escape. Or try to; before they get out the building collapses partially trapping one man, who burns to death, and seriously injuring two others.
Again, I guess that'd be acceptable to you, just as long as the message that we hate people who don't speak English is enforced.
What a putz.
So I suggest that all of our government officials, all the way down to the police and fireman learn to speak, Chinese, German, Arabic, Spanish, and Korean.....
And why don't they do this in Mexico or Guatemala?
Because they don't have to! The good old US of A will cater to their lazy butts and they know it.
Uh, not quite. See the link in reply # 38.
United States naturalization laws require that an applicant for citizenship have "an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write and speak" in ordinary, commonly used English.
The word 'understanding' implies a great deal more than a working knowledge.
Wrong. It is required to have a WORKING KNOWLEDGE of English, that's all. I have a "working knowledge" of Spanish, for that matter.
Suffice to say, your experience has been different than mine.
When I was in physics, many of my co-workers were Chinese, and spoke English from passably to well. I also had Japanese co-workers, and their English tended to be slightly better, on average, than the Chinese. When I lived in Japan, by the way, I got by with Japanese, and did not expect any government or emergency services to be in English.
My wife is from the Phillippines. She speaks English, as does her family. He grandmother is certainly the worst at English, but everyone else is quite good.
In general, most of the Asians I've dealt with in this country speak English at least passably - except for those who were elderly when they came over here. They, by the way, tend to expect their family to provide them with translations, and do not expect the country to bend to their whim.
Drew Garrett
When my wife was preparing for her citizenship test, the papers said she had to be "proficient" in English. It made it sound like even more than understanding, and she was worried about missing some grammar points (she has a somewhat amusing (to me, anyway) tendency to get gender pronouns wrong, using her for a man or him for a woman...)
Anyway, the test proved to be terribly simple. My wife spoke better English than the examiner.
Drew Garrett
It's the same when we go to Mexico to travel or study or live, it's much more enjoyable and you get a lot more out of it if you learn Spanish well enough, I don't think Americans should go there and expect them to speak English or wonder why they're isolated to a couple resorts and American style hotels.
You really can't begin to understand a Mariachi or Ranchero song if you don't learn the language they're written in and you can't say you understand the country if you can't speak to the average person you find there. I don't see why our government is encouraging separate languages for different groups after all that about integration between blacks and whites. Two or more languages amounts to segregation and a worse type than we had with Jim Crow laws.
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