Applicants Without Bilingual Skills Will Not Be Considered....

[Digit]

I almost became excited when I saw a job posted I had "thought" I qualified for after looking through so many postings.
That was until I saw the notation in my subject line.

[Kralizec]

1. Better learn another language then. n/t

[Digit]

7. They want people who speak spanish

The salary offered for this Customer Service position is paltry at best.
Even if I WERE to learn spanish, they would still choose someone who spoke it as their native language.
When my mother came here from Germany, it was REQUIRED that she learn english and so she did.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. It still is Digit

when you take yoru citizenship exam they test your langauge skills

[expatriot]

20. Things change. We are becoming a bilingual society. nt

[kurth]

2. This is America

I don't want to sound jingoistic or bigoted against any particular linguistic group, but since when does an American citizen have to learn a foreign language in order to be gainfully employed in America?

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The US legally does not have a national language

that said, we do need to learn how to properly teach American, let alone other langauges.

[Dora]

59. LOL!

I love it. We don't speak English, we speak "American."

[Daphne08]

4. This was the situation in Miami when I lived there in the

early 1980's.

[bliss_eternal]

36. Been the norm here in California for a while, too...

particularly in the health care, legal, education (to a degree) and customer service industries. I didn't know this was the case in Miami.

What's really interesting (to me at least)is California attempted to pass a ruling making English the official language. I believe it passed, but we have many, many different languages here regardless of their 'law.' They didn't do anything to support their law, like requiring immigrants be fluent before entering california (similiar to canada)...AND there were already many people here that spoke other languages SO I don't understand why they passed such a silly law to begin with.

At this point, I'm guessing we (californians) should ALL try to learn some other languages to communicate with each other. Also so we can help immigrants learn english so they can vote(hopefully as Dems). :patriot: Or do they make the voting ballots in other languages? They should, but something tells me no... hope i'm wrong.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off topic. :hi:

Sorry that you couldn't get the job, Digit--I know that can be frustrating. I applied for a job once, and was in the interview and they asked if I was bilingual. It wasn't in the ad, no one asked when setting up the interview--so I was frustrated that they wasted my time--different issue, but still frustrating. :hug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

60. Oh yes I remember that initiative

there are several reasons it was never enforced.

1.- Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (and both countries act like it is still enforce, therefore it is). In that treaty the US Federal Government agreed not to force Mexicans, now under American Flag, or their descendants to speak English. That is why, if you remember the night it passed, the AG said I cannot enforce this. Oh the penalty for actually trying to enforce that law... California would revert to Mexico. (I am talking of the theory here, but that was also given as a reason by Dan Lungreen)

2.- Ir is next to impossible to enforce

Oh and yes they do print them cute ballots in multiple languages, never mind I am a US Citizen and I can speak and read English I get both version, English and Spanish... of the voter guide. Yes I get to roll eyes a lot... and quite frankly sometimes the translation they just took it through a computer language emulation program and it shows... maybe I should volunteer to translate the damn booklets!

Now I am fully bilingual but somehow I don't look the part, (yes white as can be... my parents came from Russia and Poland), so at times I ge the feeling I did not get a job since I did not look the part... problem is you Carnot prove that

[Mind_your_head]

9. Since we became part of a 'global economy'

and America doesn't set the rules anymore? :shrug:

One world government here we come ~ unready and/or unwilling ~ that's where this is all going. :grr:

[w13rd0]

19. We are, to our detriment...

...one of the most sadly monolingual nations in the world. And our literacy rate in our "national language (which isn't)" isn't all that great either.

Learning other languages, studying other cultures, societies and nations, is something sorely needed, and not just for kids. The US needs to stop thinking of itself as the only kid on the block.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

35. Speaking as a native of the UK,

I can assure you that you're not quite as bad as some e.g. us; or at least I doubt you are, given that at least an appreciable fraction of your citizens speak Spanish. I don't know the exact statistics, though.

However, compared with most other nations, UK and US standards of language teaching are indeed both atrocious.

[expatriot]

21. Things change. Get used to it.

you said:

"since when does an American citizen have to learn a foreign language in order to be gainfully employed in America?"

my answer: they don't. Spanish is not a foriegn language in America. It is our second language.

[AlienGirl]

31. It's ridiculous that American schools graduate monolingual students

In most of the world, bilingualism or even trilingualism is simply expected. I think it is a disgrace that our schools don't routinely turn out bi- and tri-lingual students, and that our second-language education is left until high school when most people are less able to absorb another language than they were much earlier.

Tucker

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. When I graduated HS

IN MEXICO no less

I was expected to know Spanish, English and since this was a private Jewish School Hebrew... I also got a smattering of Ydish, which actually allows me to understand some German.

Part of the problem is how we teach languages in the states, designed to fail but you will not get them to change... and adopt systms that are used world wide beyond mission critical langauge schools (DoD and State Department)

[bliss_eternal]

37. Wow--that's really cool!

I'm a language lover, so that just sounds like a wonderful education!
I was so pissed off in college, that the school I attended didn't offer latin.

Come on, latin--words are based on latin!! There is no excuse for them not offering it!! :grr:

Sorry--it still makes me mad. LOL!

[nadinbrzezinski]

56. We took a year of Latin too

but I never count that one... it was called Ethymology, and it was a required course... oh and it was a pain

[bicentennial_baby]

45. Exactement!

I agree wholeheartedly, although I graduated with a bunch of dead languages under my belt. Now though, in college, it's all about le Francais, pour moi. :)

[KansDem]

58. Switzerland has FOUR official languages...

German, French, Italian, and Romansch

I was there for a few months in the 1980s and was amazed at how multi-lingual the Swiss are. In addition to these four languages, many Swiss speak English, making it a kind of "unofficial" 5th language.

[bowens43]

34. When the employer requires it.

[Kralizec]

40. You don't *have* to learn a language to work here.

But it sure as hell does help getting a better paid job. It's just the way things are. Businesses don't just talk to English-speaking customers anymore.

[northzax]

49. when the company in question

deals with bilingual clients and wants to serve them? If the job involves dealing with people who speak spanish, shouldn't the company hire someone who can communicate with them?

I spent last week telemarketing calling small european companies. every single receptionist spoke English, ones in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, everywhere. Why? because they wanted to do business with people who spoke English. And I'm willing t obe they spoke French as well. Probably enough German to get by. (by the way, I speak enough French to get by, so I didn't check the receptionists in France of Belgium.

welcome to the world. If you don't speak some Spanish, you are at a competitive disadvantage. (I don't, but I'm working on remedying that) There should not be a requirement, from the government, that you speak spanish, but a company can require anything they want.

[JVS]

5. What kind of job, where, what other language?

I speak German, does that make me ok?

[wake.up.america]

6. Ich kenne Leute die 3 oder 4 Sprachen beherrschen. Nichts neues. Du bist.

schwer in Ordnung.

[wake.up.america]

10. Se puede aprender!

почему нет?

[sam sarrha]

11. you can tell the Mexicans will be flooding in when Walmart puts in a whole

Isle of mexican food in.. a week later there are Mexicans everywhere.

I think the distribution is planed out so as not to piss of people like they did in atlanta when over 800 a week a came in and lined up for work along the road..

the city decided to build a day labor facility costing 2.5 million dollars..for them when day labor isn't available for citizens.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. somehow I think I should resent that

for the mild racist statement...as I am that uggly thing you call Mexican... ok, whatever

[sam sarrha]

29. illegal.. undocumented, Mexico is exporting their poverty here to raise

the standard of living for the have-everything class is second only to France..

a deal has been made with Fox to export the poverty to create poverty here by lowering wages.. 10% of Mexico has migrated to the USA.. but migrate isn't the right word, they are not flying home in the fall.. this is the largest migration of people in the history of the world.

NAFTA has taken 24,000,000 jobs from the US, and the nearly 20 million migrants take jobs too..so i guess i am just whining about 40 million jobs lost, not counting China india Pakistan bangladesh honduras Taiwan.. etc etc.. and i cant find one that pays minimum wage and i have a morgage..

when does it end.. i live in a very rural area that has lost thousands of jobs.. there are NO jobs to be had and more leave every month.. where do we go when we are homeless.. the wife, my blind 85 year old mother 2 dogs an a cat living in a 93 ford escort.. with not gas no food.. no address no phone no job..

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. my, god

you realize this started well before bush and fox?

It started in 1848 actually, a litle history works

Now you want to solve it? INSIST the damn law if followed with the corporatins, but this is not new...

And when does it end, maybe when Ameicans have had it and rise up in a revolution... or demand that laws are followed and plenty of them are in the books to deal with this.

As I said, racism is an ugly thing

[sam sarrha]

43. the Current Fascist corporatists are using this and the mexicans, this is

astronomically worse since BuSh1 and ESPECIALLY since Bu$hitCo2

the facts are not racist.. I am for El Paso and My community in Central California was "OverRun" within a a couple years the Migrant population went form 18% to 82% and people moved out because of the violence.. the closed the parks and fenced them in there was so much drug dealing and stabling and shootings. my small community wasn't the only one.. during Bu$h1 Mexican gangs were systematically driving out residents all over the area.. constant drive by shootings.. my uncle put sheet steal around the walls of their living room, bedrooms and put all the furniture in the floor... the houses get boarded up they default morgages..till now, and the banks that launder the drug money foreclose and spouse up the houses and neighborhood and sell it to yuppies for a big profit. did you see "Boys in the Hood" when the uncle was lecturing them under the big billboard.. this part of their program is more benign but systematic. the Mexican Poor are pawns.. and we are stalemated by these fascist neocon bastards.. i grew up with mexicans, mexicans are just people too.. trying to feed their families. don't ignore the greater picture and fall for their disinformation propaganda.. divide and conquer.. i am not the enemy, the neocon-fascists are they took power during Regan and have been trying to destroy the constitution ever since. .

I really feel for the poor from mexico..our middle class and poor here will be as or worse off than in mexico soon.. the problem is the Corrupt Fascist Mexican Government and the fascist corrupt american government..
NOT those that complain about and few will do it publicly for fear of having to have debate when the other side keeps repeating 'Racist'

the Drug dealers are using poor migrants as mules to ship drugs over, 85% of the crystal meth comes from Mexico and i cant buy antihistamines without getting on an FBI list. the Mexican government is demoniacally EVIL.. our government is evil and festering.

I am not the problem for speaking out. and that doesn't make me a raciest

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. I live in San Diego

and I can tell you from parents in Mexico, there was NO AGREEMENT, in fact Fox is a tad torqued with Bush... one reason, among many, Fox wanted Mexican Nationals to be able to pay to the IMSS and that would be used as EMERGENCY insurance to treat them over the border.

Bush said no... now think about this, the Mexican Government came up with a solution to these people using the health care system (mostly in emergencies) and paying for that use and the Bush Administration said NO. Care to tell me why the FEDS said no?

Look they are not here to overrun. They are here to make a living

And yes you are being racist, even if you don't realize this. Oh and El Paso \CIudad Juarez are the same part of the frotera culture as the San Diego \Tijuana region, you really don't like that culture move to OH.

As to central california, you know what until WE START fining the large farm conglomerates for hiring illegal aliens that is not gong to stop, and it ebbs and flows... but reality is... people LIKE their cheap lettuce, and as long as we, yes kemosabe, we, are not willing to pay more for it, it is very much a viscous cycle... did I mention these are the same farm conglomerates that due to NAFTA are in the process of destroying the Ejidos?

Oh and the use and abuse of health systems occurs on BOTH sides of the border.

And the corrupt fascist US Government is the problem. The Mexican Government is corrupt, but many of its fascists elements have gone away... and it will be amusing next year for the elections for the PAN (Right Wing Party) is not going to win... but of course it took international monitors, transparent boxes and supervised elections to clean that up... I fear we need that here.

Oh and to salaries and other issues in Mexico can you spell NAFTA? I knew you could... the shoe industry for example, going back oh to Colonial times and considered at one point to par with the Italian industry, has been wiped out... by NAFTA.Did I mention it paid well? But all those jobs are gone. In fact the desendustrialization of Mexico is ahead of the US... so what you fear which is we will see this in the States you are correct. This is project from the top, by the way, and I don't mean the Mexcian Government, but some in the INSUTRIALIZED world that need or beleive we need to lower the standad of life of Ameicans. But Mexicans, must like Irish in the 1010s make very convenient targets to the anger.

Oh and by the way I am not defending Fox either, but you really should study the dynamics, they are far more complex than you think. Though some of them have very close relationships with the Italian and Irish communtiy during the early part of last century, and what people believed of them. Go to college, take a course... being on the border, I am sure they offer one.

[expatriot]

22. i suppose the day labor facility did not check to make sure you

were a non-citizen. I am sure if you wanted to stand in line all day waiting for a manual labor job you could have.

Things change. I am a white monolingual english speaker originally from Iowa and now I live in Yuma, Ariz. My monolingualism has prevented me from getting many jobs that I would have loved to have in this town but I don't begrudge anyone for it, my birthrite of being born a white male American citizen in a small Iowa town with a very good public education system to college-educated public school teachers is such an undeserved blessing that I could not dare begrudge a brave yet uneducated, displaced peasants of Guatelamala or southern Mexico who dreams of earning a few dollars a day and wants something better for their babies.

(obviously, this hypothetical person I speak of is not taking the jobs I want but I don't begrudge the bilingual economy that provides services to the agricultural workers and custodial staff, etc.)

[sam sarrha]

27. any job

[expatriot]

30. if you are seriously having problems finding *any* job that doesnt

require spanish (i live in a border town, and there are plenty of jobs for monolingual english), perhaps you should move to a more english speaking area and learn spanish and teach your kids spanish.

[sam sarrha]

44. that is a racist thing to say.. move out

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. No it is not racist

it is the reality of the economy.

In certain sections of NYC you need to speak Russian, and in certain sections of LA you need to speak Vietnamese.

You are having a problem, with the fact that this country has truly never been momolingual nor does it have a national language

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[northzax]

51. before this vanishes into the well deserved ether

how do you know when a racist moves into the neighborhood?

the rank stench anda compulsive desire to wash your hands.

[ugarte]

13. Many police departments offer extra money for bilingual skills

I see nothing wrong with encouraging cops to be better able to communicate with the people they're serving.

[Digit]

15. I don't want to see discrimination of Americans

Period

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. many police departments also teach those language skils

[northzax]

50. many jobs also require you to have a diploma

or a set of skills, is that discrimination?

[cire4]

14. Europeans have to learn 2nd and 3rd languages to be employed...

And knowledge of English is necessary if you want any kind of decent job in Japan, China, Korea, India, or any other country in the world

Bi-lingualism is going to become more and more essential as economies continue to globalize. It's demand is just now beginning to reveal itself to the United States. Better get used to it. Learning foreign languages will no longer become a fun novelty... it will become a necessity like it is in many other parts of the world.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Oh of that future it coming

that is for sure... and Americans are the laest prepared for this reality, between poor to lousy teaching skills and that historic allergy to lerning a second, let alone a third language, will be tough

[expatriot]

24. it will be a hard reality for america to accept, that is for sure.

Many monolingual english speakers in the United States believe that they should be entitled to the luxury of having all business in their country conducted in english and they point to the past for justification of this desire. They forget that everything changes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Not only that

the US does NOT have a national language... legally

I mean Mexico it is Spanish.. Canada is French and English, the US doesn't so even legally this is a proplem

[NewJeffCT]

38. people forget

When Italians came over here 100 or so years ago & had their own Italian neighborhoods in New York City, Boston, Philly, etc, a lot of the business in those neighborhoods was done in Italian. My great grandmother came over here from Sicily around 1900 and still barely spoke English when she passed away in the mid 1970s. Her children spoke good English, however. The sad part is, my Sicilian grandfather married my Italian grandmother and they couldn't agree on which language (Sicilian or Italian) to teach my mom & my aunt, so they learned neither.

And, other ethnic groups are the same.

[rucky]

23. Yo apprendo Espanol ahora.

es muy mal, pero es necessario.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Quien es ese? Una foto de Bush como bebe?

:-)

[arcos]

28. It is time for Americans to start learning other languages...

Lots of people around the world learn English because it allows them to get much better jobs in their own countries.

In Latin America, in lots of places if you don't know English you will be passed in favor of somebody who does. I really don't see why it should be any different for Americans...

[Karenina]

39. Why are Americans so determined

to remain ignorant? There IS NO DOWN SIDE to expanding one's mind by learning a new language. The process opens up whole new worlds! I.JUST.DON'T.GET.IT. :freak:

[helderheid]

41. Does Dutch count?

[annabanana]

42. they ALL count.... I am so jealous of polyglots!

There are some people who are blessed with the ability to learn languages as easy as breathing...

[helderheid]

47. I tried to learn Spanish and had a hell of a time. Dutch came

easier but living in Holland played a huge role in that.

[CatBoreal]

46. My sister is an engineer working in the UK...

...and is always being head-hunted because she speaks English and French, some German and is currently learning Japanese.

Having another language is an asset that cannot be overlooked. I know being bilingual has provided both she and myself with more opportunity than if we were monolingual.

When I was in the Dominican last summer, our guides spoke Spanish, English, French, Portugese and was learning German. It was the only way he could get and keep a job in the tourism industry.

[LuCifer]

48. Well...

...tell 'em what I like to say:

WELCOME TO AMERICA, NOW SPEAK CHEROKEE!

Lu Cifer
http://www.LU13.TK

[zanne]

53. Where I live, the required languages were English and French

In tourist areas, that is. I don't remember anybody bitching about that.

[zanne]

54. Where I live, the required languages were English and French

In tourist areas, that is. I don't remember anybody bitching about that.

[SmokingJacket]

57. That's disappointing, but knowing another language is

important in some jobs.

I sure wish I was bilingual.

Or had a job, for that matter.

GOod luck to you!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

61. Does being fluent in profanity count? If so, I'm overqualified.

On the serious side. If the job requires that you deal with both Spanish & English speakers, it only seems reasonable to seek someone who is bilingual.