Today let’s discuss the importance of the Venezuelan immigrant who comes to the United States to the translation industry. This is a very important marriage if you will where many Venezuelans leave their homeland to come to the US (and elsewhere) for a better life.
When these immigrants arrive here in the US, their goal is primarily to make life better for themselves. Often, they bring with them all types of documents like marriage certificates, divorce decrees, high school, and college transcripts with the goal of integrating into the society at large and to make life better for themselves. Education usually plays an important role in their mentality and belief system. Once they get these documents translated, they can use them for their immigration status adjustments and to further their education, just to name a few examples.
The focus of this article is primarily on the Venezuelan immigrant and the translation industry. But it could have easily been about other immigrants from any other country who come to the US because their experiences are similar for the most part to the Venezuelan experiences. Soon, in another article, we may be focusing on the experiences of the Mexican immigrant vis-a-vis the translation industry. This is a way of saying that immigrants in general (not just Venezuelan immigrants) contribute so much to the translation industry and we, in this business, in this field, should be extremely grateful to have them around. if you are a member of this industry like I am or like our company Languages Unlimited is, you can see the difference that the Venezuelan immigrant makes to the translation industry. On a weekly basis we receive so many Spanish translation and interpretation assignments from these individuals and believe me, this is not an exaggeration by any means. They bring a lot of money to the translation industry, and they represent one of our biggest groups of clients as well.
As you may or may not know because of the current crisis in Venezuela in terms of its political instability, Venezuelan immigrants are treated much more differently than say Haitian immigrants and this is by no means racially motivated like some observers may claim, or some other preferences of the United States government. This is strictly because of the way that government views what is currently happening in both countries. With the Venezuelans, they see it as the people escaping if you will a totalitarian government which is not the case in Haiti according to them.
Now, let’s get back on track and discuss the type of translation services that the Venezuelan immigrants request from our company on a regular basis. Well as I said earlier in a couple of paragraphs above in this article, they bring so many documents with them when they come here. In the case of a birth certificate which would obviously be in Spanish, they must get it translated into English to use it for whatever purpose that they intend to use it for. One such purpose could be for the USCIS if they are attempting to obtain permanent residency in this country and for citizenship application as well. Consequently, their birth certificate would need to be translated into English. Likewise, if they bring school transcripts and their intent would ultimately be to continue or further their education, and when they apply for admission to a college or university, they will need these school transcripts translated. Another such document could be a divorce decree or even a marriage certificate for instance if let’s say they were married before in Venezuela and they come to this country with the hope of marrying someone else or remarry if you will, of course they would need to get both their marriage certificate and their divorce decree translated.
Finally, other types of documents that may require translation include documents that may belong to their relatives. In addition to their own documents, they may bring papers from relatives which will be needed when the time comes to apply for them to migrate into this country. Again, these documents will probably be (as stated earlier) birth certificates, school transcripts, and so on. The whole cycle of translation services continues. I’m sure by now you could see the importance of the Venezuelan immigrant in the translation industry and as I said earlier, this is something that is very unfamiliar to a lot of people but if you are in the translation industry you will easily see how important these people are to this industry or this field. This country has always been a country of immigrants and it will continue to be that way. If it does, the translation industry will continue to flourish.