I was looking at the recent publicity on the 2010 census and struck by how it relates to the Hispanic population of the U.S. 

According to the most newly released information, one in six Americans is now Hispanic.  Hispanics account for more than half the nation’s growth between 2000 and 2010, jumping to over 50 million people.  They are all over the continental U.S.  While before they were mostly concentrated on the coasts in the larger cities, now they live in the most unlikely places, including small towns, of the U.S. heartland and elsewhere.  Seven states would have lost population were it not for the Hispanic community in this last decade.

What this means is that this country, which up to very recent years was primarily a black-white nation, is now heavily populated by growing ethnic communities, such as Hispanic and Asian, for example, everywhere, which cannot be ignored.

Americans have long felt alienated from the rest of the world, separated as we are by two oceans from Europe and Asia, and with one of our two adjoining nations speaking English like us, we’ve felt pretty smug about not having to deal with the “foreign influence” and gotten pretty upset when told that we had to accomodate to other languages and cultures. 

That world of isolation is dead.

Nowadays, if a business or government entity wants to make contact with all the members of its community, it can no longer ignore the fact that a vast majority of the faces out there are not necessarily native English speakers or members of the good old boy membership.  When the census says that barely three decades from now non-Hispanic whites will be a minority, any company worth its salt had better sit up and take notice.  Foreign languages are going to have to become part of the focus in outreach, advertising and public relations of any organization planning to stay in front of the public market. To think otherwise is to ignore the onrushing future, bury one’s head in the sand and nail one’s feet to the floor. 

We’re here to help you get on board the language train.  Don’t get left behind and become a statistic.