Decades after being discovered by the U.S. census, the Latino community remains an underserved demographic in the United States. An increasing number of businesses offer callers the option of interacting in Spanish and some provide website content as well. That said, some Presidential hopefuls would turn back the clock on the proliferation of the Spanish language in the United States.

• Last year we pinged the 100 top internet retailers with 3 questions in English and the same 3 in Spanish. Seventeen firms answered all 3 Spanish inquiries en español, providing useful information in their replies (links are to Spanish-language sites): Abebooks, Art.com, Chadwick’s, Crutchfield, Drugstore, Fresh Direct, Home Depot, JC Whitney, Musician’s Friend, Omaha Steaks, Quixtar, Real Music, Scholastic, Sears Holding, Sharper Image, Sportsmen’s Guide, and Zappos. The other 83 varied in their responses; most answered in English if they bothered to answer at all (read about our research, in Spanish).
• Last week Marvel Entertainment announced that it was taking its Fantastic Four franchise to Puerto Rico — in Spanish. It released “Fantastic Four: Isla de la Muerte!” and “Los Cuatro Fantasticos: ¡Isla de la Muerte!” in English and Spanish, respectively. What better way to introduce mutant crime-fighters to Spanish-speaking comic book readers than to have them battle El Chupacabras (”goat sucker”), a mythical (?), vampire-like, farm animal-killing creature originating in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
• Last month eBay’s Kijiji (”village” in Swahili) rolled out Spanish-language options for hispanohablante-heavy Miami (Florida) and Brownsville, El Paso, and Macallan (Texas). The company reportedly plans to offer translated website content for cities with large populations of Polish, French, and Chinese residents to increase its ability to reach non-Anglophone populations in the U.S.

On the government side, you’ll find some agencies at the city, state, and federal level increasing the amount of information they provide in languages other than English because translation is the law. A succession of federal laws, court rulings, and executive orders has mandated that the government not discriminate on the basis of language.

That legal mandate for translation is likely to get tested after this year’s Presidential election (N.B. you can run, but you can’t hide, from news of American politics). States like Arizoa and Oklahoma have already begun enforcing laws that call for harsher treatment of illegal immigrants. A New York Times summary of candidate views on immigration showed that most Democrat presidential hopefuls favor immigration reform, while most Republican wannabe-presidents (the Xenophobic Six of the title) want to send illegal immigrants packing — in most cases, the sooner the better.

The exceptions are John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, both of whom support a path leading to legalization of illegal immigrants but with a requirement that they learn English along the way. That should come as no surprise: Giuliani, while mayor of New York City, was the named defendant in Ramirez vs. Giuliani, the 2001 court case that forced both the City and State of New York to offer public information in a variety of languages. McCain had his own problems last October with his Christians-to-the-front-of-the-line attitude towards Muslim politicians. Meanwhile, Republican candidate Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and a strong advocate of completing the shut-the-border fence to block illegal immigrants from Mexico, for 10 years used a landscaping contractor who regularly employed undocumented aliens (Guatemalans, not Klingons). Get set for 11 months of pre-election fun, hypocrisy, and downright mendaciousness.