BY STUDENT
It can be seen from US
population statistics that the Mexican immigrant population as increased at a
very fast rate since 1965 as seen by the immigrant and population statistics.
In the 1970s 640,000 Mexicans immigrated to the US and that number jumped to
2,249,000 in the 1990s. In 2000, Mexicans made up 26.7 percent of the US
foreign born population in the US. As a whole, Hispanics constituted 12 percent
of the total US population in 2000 and between 2000 and 2002 that number jumped
almost 10 percent (Huntington, 2013). The majority if these immigrants flood to
the major cities of the US in search of jobs to create new lives and to support
their families. Inevitably, the influx of Latin-American born immigrants
increased the number of people of this ethnicity in the school systems as the
fertility rate of these immigrant groups is much higher than native born
citizens (Huntington, 2013). These statistics offer information for these basic
questions: Does the influx of Spanish speaking citizens into the US give good
incentive for introducing dual language programs for all students within the US
education system? And, should Spanish become the second official language of
the United States?
It has become more prevalent in
many schools to offer dual-language or at least bilingual programs within the
US (Huntington, 2013). In 2000 it is
estimated that by 2050 Hispanics will make up twenty five percent of the US
population and that number will likely increase in the years following (Huntington,
2013). Today, the projection for the number of Hispanics that make up the US
population by 2050 is twenty-nine percent. There are many benefits of dual
language programs. Students are able to achieve a high level of proficiency
within their elementary years. Bilingual individuals perform better on
cognitive tasks such as pattern recognition, problem solving, and divergent
thinking. Bilingual speakers are more marketable job candidates. Students within
these programs are able to interact with speakers whose first language was
either Spanish or English (“Dual-Language Program”). Immigrants whose original
language was Spanish will feel more welcome and less intimidated integrating
themselves into the US education system if these programs were to be
implemented especially in the cities where most of the Spanish speaking
immigrants.
I have to question however, why
Hispanics are having a hard time, or maybe aren’t as willing, to learn English
like so many other immigrant groups. The only palpable difference is that there
are more of them. The first thing that most other immigrant groups do when they
arrive, if they hadn’t done so already, is learn English. My conclusion is that they don’t feel the need
because they live in culturally centered Spanish groups and the issue is not as
pressing. In any case, many employers are preferentially hiring bilingual
individuals as opposed to candidates that only speak English (Huntington, 2013).
This is the direct result of the increase in the number of individuals that
interact with employees of many businesses that work with the public. As an
incentive, those individuals that are hired because there are able to interact
in both languages are paid, on average, more than monolingual individuals. As a
result, political debated have occurred as to whether Spanish should be made an
official language of the US. This would take time however, because English
isn’t even an official language. If that were to happen though, all political
figures, educators, and employees in the business pool would need to be fluent
in both Spanish and English (Huntington, 2013).
Huntington,
Samuel P. "Foreign Policy Magazine." Foreign Policy.
N.p., 1 Mar. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.
Dual Language Program." Los Angeles Unified School
District. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.
