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To Get Ahead in America, Aprenda Español
Immigrants to the United States who don’t speak English are keenly aware that acquiring it will increase their viability as an employee. In an ironic twist, NAM writer Louis Nevaer discovered that U.S. Latinos are being pressured by their employers to learn Spanish. Nevaer is the author, most recently, of HR and the New Hispanic Workforce, a book about Hispanics in the labor force.
NEW YORK – The more Latinos embrace speaking English and move away from Spanish, the greater the obstacles they encounter in their careers.
“If my husband speaks (broken) Spanish, it's cute,” says Maria Rivera, a Hispanic from Texas who married a non-Hispanic American. “If I do, it's incorrect.”
Latinos are now held to a higher standard. Many Latin American immigrants think they should be proficient in Spanish as part of their obligation to their Hispanic heritage. Non-Hispanic Americans agree, seeing them as a linguistic bridge between English-speaking American sellers and the new surge of Spanish-speaking consumers.
Waves of Spanish speaking immigrants over the past 20 years have turned the United States into a bilingual consumer economy. American businesses want to increase their market share by courting Hispanic consumers and they desperately need employees fluent in Spanish.
“I got hired because I spoke Spanish and the other applicants didn’t,” a 20-something Latina said on “Sucias” (Dirty Girls), a Yahoo chat room for and about Latinas. “The manager had noticed that he was beginning to get a lot more Spanish customers and hired me.”
Fortune 500 companies presume that Latino employees are, if not fluent, then at least proficient in Spanish. When employers find out this is not the case, problems arise. On Sucias, one Latina woman confided, “my boss told me to go to night school and learn Spanish,” while another admitted that “it would be sooo helpful if I did speak Spanish fluently for my job!”
From Citigroup and hospitals in New York to Archer Daniels Midland and JPMorgan Chase, companies are beginning to pay for “Spanish for Latinos” classes, which is not as easy as it sounds. When the Department of Education launched the Southwest Comprehensive Center, SWCC, a joint program with Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah in 2005, its mission was to help school-aged children in these states. That is when the needs of Latino children learning Spanish became apparent.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=4c94d0cfd0bd49faa4ffc2af35689844
“If my husband speaks (broken) Spanish, it's cute,” says Maria Rivera, a Hispanic from Texas who married a non-Hispanic American. “If I do, it's incorrect.”
Latinos are now held to a higher standard. Many Latin American immigrants think they should be proficient in Spanish as part of their obligation to their Hispanic heritage. Non-Hispanic Americans agree, seeing them as a linguistic bridge between English-speaking American sellers and the new surge of Spanish-speaking consumers.
Waves of Spanish speaking immigrants over the past 20 years have turned the United States into a bilingual consumer economy. American businesses want to increase their market share by courting Hispanic consumers and they desperately need employees fluent in Spanish.
“I got hired because I spoke Spanish and the other applicants didn’t,” a 20-something Latina said on “Sucias” (Dirty Girls), a Yahoo chat room for and about Latinas. “The manager had noticed that he was beginning to get a lot more Spanish customers and hired me.”
Fortune 500 companies presume that Latino employees are, if not fluent, then at least proficient in Spanish. When employers find out this is not the case, problems arise. On Sucias, one Latina woman confided, “my boss told me to go to night school and learn Spanish,” while another admitted that “it would be sooo helpful if I did speak Spanish fluently for my job!”
From Citigroup and hospitals in New York to Archer Daniels Midland and JPMorgan Chase, companies are beginning to pay for “Spanish for Latinos” classes, which is not as easy as it sounds. When the Department of Education launched the Southwest Comprehensive Center, SWCC, a joint program with Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah in 2005, its mission was to help school-aged children in these states. That is when the needs of Latino children learning Spanish became apparent.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=4c94d0cfd0bd49faa4ffc2af35689844
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