Taking a step toward understanding

First responders in Rochester are learning other languages, at least the most important phrases, to help their immigrant residents. 57 languages are spoken in their schools. DP

By David Peterson and Jean Hopfensperger, Star Tribune staff writers

StarTribune.com: Matthew Mueller, a Rochester fire captain, volunteered to learn a language other than Spanish, but the city contracted with a company that wasn't fully geared to teach Arabic, and it doesn't offer Somali.

So Mueller, like other firefighters and police officers, wound up with Spanish -- even though school data suggest three-quarters of Rochester's immigrant population speak other languages.

That combination of goodwill and difficult fits and starts is typical of the adjustments that smaller cities across the Midwest are having to make with a tide of immigrants flooding into the nation's heartland, according to two new national studies.

A report by the Century Foundation examined Midwestern states such as Minnesota and Iowa under the label of "immigration's new frontiers."
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