Campos: The workers often press '2'

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

These days, whenever I try to navigate some electronic bureaucracy via a touch-tone phone, the first choice I'm asked to make is often whether I prefer to hear my menu of options in English or Spanish. The question generally induces a twinge of irritation in me, which for a horrifying moment allows me to a feel kinship with the souls of U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, and soon to be ex-U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

Tancredo and Hayworth are two of the more prominent politicians who have made names for themselves by noisily demanding that our border with Mexico be sealed, to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from our southern neighbors, which accounts for perhaps 90 percent of the 12 million or so aliens currently in the United States without proper legal documentation.

In my case, this sense of irritation at attempts to make American society more hospitable to people for whom Spanish is their first language has a certain irony, given that Spanish is my first language as well. I spoke no English when I began elementary school, but, like almost all children who are born in this country, my English soon outstripped my abilities in the native Spanish of my parents.

Spanish language services are, for the most part, for the benefit of adults who come to this country to work. It's far more difficult for adults to pick up English than it is for children, which, combined with the high rate of immigration from Spanish-speaking countries, accounts for the appearance of bilingual signs in some of our public spaces, as well as for the increasing eagerness of private businesses to cater to a Spanish-speaking market.

All this is obvious, but what's not so clear is why even someone with my background can find some aspects of this irritating or disturbing. On one level it's just the sheer neurotic impatience we've all been socialized to experience at even the tiniest delays: In our hyper-efficient culture, an extra five seconds spent dealing with a touch-tone menu somehow feels like a great imposition on our precious time.

On another, anxiety about creeping bilingualism is quite reasonable. Nations in which everyone, or nearly everyone, doesn't speak a single common language face a host of problems avoided by nations in which there is a true national tongue.

On yet another level, resentment toward the increasing prominence of Spanish is a product of the kind of ugly nativist sentiment exploited by Tancredo and his ilk. Throughout American history, people who don't speak English well have been characterized as alien invaders who threaten to undermine our native culture with their un-American beliefs and practices.

Yet the most significant fact to keep in mind about people who speak Spanish in the United States is this: such people are invariably performing useful labor. In fact, it isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that the odds a person does the kind of work that simply has to get done in order to keep civilization afloat go up in direct proportion to the probability that this person speaks Spanish.

Those among us who build the buildings, and cook the food, and clean the bathrooms, and trim the trees, and care for the children - in short, the people who, in Orwell's phrase, "make the wheels go round" - are increasingly the people who press "2" in order to hear their options in Spanish.

Meanwhile, the immense mass of well-paid parasites who infest our fabulously wealthy nation - the financial analysts, the political consultants, the managers of human resources, the vice presidents for West Coast promotion, the producers of television commercials designed to increase the consumption of certain breakfast cereals, and, needless to say, the syndicated newspaper columnists - will continue to become annoyed at the need to press "1."

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Reach him at paul.campos@colorado.edu.