Immigrants Making Choices


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Lately, we have been doing a great deal of work for clients on projects entailing
market research, and online surveys.  All of this work has been for the US Hispanic 
market.  Research is a job like housework - one that is never finished.  What you
know about a market today may be misleading tomorrow.  Today your customers or 
employees like vanilla, yesterday it was lemon tomorrow it will be strawberry.  
It is in such fine distinctions that success or failure lies.  Assumptions based 
on yesterday's research will have you making chocolate when your customers are 
crying for vanilla.  Choices are what everything is all about.

Immigrant communities in the United States have made choices that native 
communities do not have to make.  Making these choices - to leave one's native 
country and begin anew in a new land is wrenching and difficult.  The immigrant 
uproots him or herself with difficulty but with hope that the new circumstances 
will outweigh the losses of the old.  He or she knows very well the many benefits 
the United States, unique in its values and aspirations, offers to the newcomer 
who, in many ways, appreciates those qualities and opportunities more than the 
native-born. 

At the same time the immigrant clings emotionally to many characteristics of 
his or her native land - language, foods, scents, landscape, entertainments, 
and holidays - things that traditionally were sources of satisfaction, community, 
pride, solace or joy. Melding the old with the new does not discard one for 
the other but blends both into something entirely new. It is a cumulative process.

The United States from its very beginning has been a nation of immigrants. The 
most fundamental values cherished by its earliest immigrants are embedded in 
the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths 
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." - all the same 
before the law. (By the way - immediate translation of the Declaration was seen 
as a must for the benefit of the German community in Philadelphia.) 
http://www.dhm.de/magazine/unabhaengig/docs_e.htm#

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are aspirations of every human being. 
All of us, some earlier, some later, are immigrants to the United States. We 
bring character, passions, skills and strengths with us and, too often, ignorant 
and despicable customs as well. Slavery made all the protestations of universal 
brotherhood seem nothing more than hypocritical mockery of those self-evident 
truths so beautifully proclaimed. But, over time, the ideals asserted themselves 
and the dream prevailed over savage reality. 

From September 15 to October 15 we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to
remember and honor the valuable and joyous customs and traditions that characterize 
the Hispanic contribution to the United States. The job of extending and defending 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is one that Hispanic immigrants, 
old and new, take up with the same valor and enthusiasm of all our fellow immigrants. 
Democracy is also a job like housework - one that is never finished. 


Martha. 

 

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About the Author, if using, please include:

Martha E. Galindo, President and CEO of Galindo Publicidad, Inc.
A multilingual translations agency, selected twice as 
a Florida 100 company. Author of “How Do You Say…?” 
an eNewsletter designed to help you improve your 
business communications in other languages,
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GPI, Inc. Request a free project quote- 
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