Workforce Language Services

Knowledge of employees’ language skills can prove extremely valuable for a business or organization. As this article describes, US Customs and Border Protection has streamlined their new employee training process through the implementation of a Spanish language competency assessment.

Starting this October, Spanish-speaking Border Patrol recruits will spend less time in training, witnesses told members of a House subcommittee at a hearing Tuesday.

To get agents in the field faster, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will administer a Spanish language proficiency test to all trainees entering the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, N.M. Those who pass will be able to skip the language component of basic training, allowing them to enter the field approximately 30 days earlier than non-Spanish speakers, said Richard Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office, in testimony before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight.

The move will help the Border Patrol meet President Bush’s goal of adding 6,000 agents by December 2008, a goal Border Patrol Academy Chief Charlie Whitmire said was entirely feasible.

Stana noted that Border Patrol officials have told him nearly half of their recruits are fluent in Spanish. “If your facilities are strained, it really doesn’t make sense to keep people there longer than they need to be to take Spanish language training that they don’t need,” he said in an interview after the hearing.

The new policy will not detract from Spanish speakers’ law enforcement training at the academy. “All current curriculum hours remain exactly the same,” Whitmire said. “Not one hour is deleted from our current law enforcement curriculum - only Spanish is removed from that curriculum and taught separately.”