Let’s consider the numbers of illegal aliens in the US.
I encourage the US to increase the legal immigration numbers and speed up the process.
I live in a multi-cultural neighborhood in Detroit and I love it. The variety of neighbors include Arabs, Latinos, Blacks, Whites, and a strong Polish heritage. Not very many Asians, but that would only make things better. I love the exchanges.
But I’m the type of person who believes in following the laws of the land. I think the entire basis of the US way of life is codified within the Constitution. We are a nation of laws, based upon a written set of laws. Our nation has the oldest written form of government in existence. It works because all groups rely on the laws – not “class” – to make decisions. The law applies equally – ask Ms. Hilton.
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So, given all of that, and the significant time that this has been going on, we’ve seen some not-so-subtle shifts in US lifestyles. There is a lot of Mexican / Spanish influence within the US happening over the past few years. I recently noticed it in an odd place – packaging. I was at Lowes (where all of the signs are dual English / Spanish), and I pulled several units of the same item off of the shelf. This was a slow-moving product, as the first few were labeled entirely in English, the rest (newer packages) had both languages on them. That’s a curious thing. So I began looking into other items in other stores. Nearly every product available for sale in my area (Detroit), has this dual language packaging. No Arabic or French. Curious, I called some people in other states – same thing, English and Spanish.
How much does it cost to re-design a package? Probably not much. But it has to be a conscious decision. A company has to look at their product purchasing demographics and decide; “We will increase our customer base if we add another language to our product label.” So they spent money redesigning their products. How big is the Spanish-reading customer base in the US? How big would any customer base have to be in order to generate a sea-change of labeling. This isn’t just one or two cross-culture products. This is nearly every product in Lowes, Home Depot, Costco, WalMart, and Sears. That’s probably every major packaging company in the US.
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A legal immigrant would have to learn English to get their visa and become a citizen. Even if a citizen learned Spanish or a legal immigrant knew Spanish, that percentage of the populace is likely to be small. Certainly it is on par with Arabic, French, Italian, Korean, or Chinese. So why the packaging changes?
Well, maybe because there are a lot more people in the US who only read Spanish than people realize.
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With the ongoing debate of illegal immigration laws, there have been many ranges of numbers of “illegals” discussed. The most common range is 12 to 20 million. The supporters of amnesty use the 12 million. (I’ve seen a few politicians who reference 10 million.) At the other end of the spectrum is the 20 million. A big swing, but perhaps the top-number is higher. The Government probably has no idea. The range of 12-20 was probably some swag that “sounded good”. Who would know? The people who best know people are marketers. People whose job it is to know their customer base. People who fight for a tenth of a percent in market share for their product. What do these people think the number of “Spanish-reading only” customers they have?
Well, if the total number of illegal immigrants is 20 million, then they’ve spent a lot of money on a small potential customer base.
Consider that that the US population is 300 million. Perhaps a third are children. That means purchase decisions are made by 200 million people. At what point does it make financial sense to re-design all of your product package in order to attract a potential customer? Would a company selling a product spend the money to re-design their packaging if their maximum potential increase in customers was only 12 million? (or less when factoring children) Is it possible that this potential customer base is higher? Much higher? Could it be as high as 40 million? 50 million? What makes sense? What demographics do these marketing people see that justifies this change? And why has it happened wholesale across so many products, stores, and companies?
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I’ve left off any comments relating to automated phone systems because I think we’ve seen that debated quite a bit. In addition, the cost of re-programming a phone system versus re-designing a package is minimal.
I’ve also “lumped” a few assumptions together:
- The majority of illegal immigrants into the US as this time are from Spanish-reading nations. I am not denigrating them in the post. I am questioning how many of them there are in the US at this time.
- I am lumping together people here legally with people here illegally in terms of their ability to read Spanish – as consumers. Again, no disrespect to peeps who can read Spanish – cool. But I doubt that demographic is large enough to warrant this action by manufacturers.
- I don’t have an issue with multiple languages on a product – if it is an international product. Many of these are not. Most packages that have English on their label are destined for the US. (e.g., not for Spain, Mexico, and the US.)
- And, yes, I do think that separating the US into an “English” vs “Spanish” populace would be a bad thing. The US is about merging. It still is the “New World”. People should come here to become American.
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If legislation passes to allow citizenship to persons who have entered the US illegally, how many people are we really talking about? Does anyone have a ball-park figure that is based in some researchable fact? I don’t trust any Government number.
Firstly) Good to see you writing again.
B) I merely wonder how in the name of jeebus can these marketing experts look themselves in the mirror? IMHO, any decent patriotic person would understand that sometimes “speaking to a new demographic” will actually undermine the system that allows them the freedom to study demographics. America (used to be) is about assimilation. Become a part of our culture and add to it, and then we’ll adapt our culture to yours. Just look at all the slang that’s stuck in American English to see the example.
At any rate, I see it as selling your country for an extra half-percent of market share, and it pisses me off.
4) Sorry about the rant, but you started it. :^)
Assuming that your observation of how eager sellers are to make a profit is true, it could be that the immigration numbers are accurate, and the label changes are just an attempt to take advantage of an underexploited market niche.
Shortly after NAFTA, I noticed an increase in products with English/French/Spanish labels – which makes sense, since all of North America became more commercially accessible. Could be that companies noticed increases in domestic sales after the multilingual labeling, word got out, and now smaller, non-international companies are following suit.