For many people in the United States that is a chilling thought but according to a report from the United States Census Bureau, minorities are now a third of the population but they expect them to become the majority in 2042 and will reach to be 54 percent by 2050. Whether or not they will rule in this country will depend on many things that will also shape our future.
A big concern is that the generation that was born in the late 40s and early 50s known as baby boomers, is mostly in the process of retiring and the number of retirees is increasing rapidly. As a result, we will not have enough workers contributing to Social Security to keep them all.
As we all know, minorities tend to occupy the lowest-wage jobs, most of them in service industries, today struggling to reach $15.00 per hour. School desertion throughout the country is filling the workforce of restaurants, hotels and hospitals. The possibility of having such a large segment of this population earning little more than the minimum wage, while professional and technical jobs have migrated abroad, means the total destruction of the United States as we know it.
If we are to exist as a powerful nation and trade leaders, we need an educated population, ready to do the tasks of our ancestors. Whether it’s in a lab, a classroom, building skyscrapers or in space, it does not matter where our parents came from. The main goal should be to prepare our future employees so that they are those professionals with high salaries for the benefit of the country.
They need to understand the need to improve our level of English, simply because English is the universal language spoken, read and written in many parts of the world.
So important is English, that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized organization of the UN which promotes the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation, decreed on January 1, 2008 that English is the standard language on international flights.
This decision was made as a result of a plane crash of November 12, 1996, in Charkhi Dadri, Haryana, India, in which the main cause was incompetence in the English language of the commander of one of the aircrafts involved. This fatal accident killed 349 people and is known as the most catastrophic air collision accident in history.
As immigrants, it is essential to maintain our cultures and our languages keeping in mind that if we want to progress, we must not forget English. An educated society is the best guarantee for our future.
