I would like to read some responses to the following observation I have made in London.

In recent months I have used 5 different London hotels. One fact has struck me about all of them. The reception desk staff members were almost exclusively non native English speakers. Furthermore, all of them gave the same reason for being in London: to learn English, and all of them said they were taking English language courses at some school or another.

For example, at a hotel off Finchely Road and at the Country Inn and Suites on Cromwell Road the the whole front desk staff and the bar tenders were from Poland. At the Hotel Troy, the receptionist on duty every time I came and went was from Togoland. She, naturally, was fluent in French.

Can anyone shed any light on this fact? Do these people work cheaply and at odd hours and hence they get hired?

It also seemed to me that the waitstaff in many restaurants and the clerks in many of the small stores were anything but native English speakers.

I had no problems with any of them, but I was struck by the fact that they were non UK born and all had the same reason for being there -- to learn English.

The young lady from Togo was quite blunt:
In French schools they learned to read and write English but they were not taught how to speak it. She was obviously speaking an unfamiliar language, but I bet in 6 - 8 months she will not be! And working in a London hotel she should be exposed to every type of accent imaginable.

Comments and amplification please.

I've stayed at the former Forum Hotel (now a Holiday Inn) on Cromwell Road and the staff members were diverse. The first time I visited London I stayed at Russell Square. The hotel employed lots of Filipinos. I didn't enquire as to the reason they were all working there, but maybe it was for the same reason: to learn English.

The same thing happens in the US and other countries where English is the first language. English is the language of business. If you have a Japanese person doing business with an Egyptian person, both will have to speak English in order to communicate.

In the Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language biz, many people who have studied English in school can only read and write it. The words are in their head, but they are too afraid of making a mistake to try to speak.

Once they get into an English speaking environment where they have to communicate to survive, they lose their inhibitions and all that language stuck in their heads comes out.

I used to teach at a Hotel Management School in Switzerland. We taught students from all around the world using English as the language of instruction. As part of their course the students would have training periods totalling 12 months at hotels and restaurants around Switzerland. I know this happens in England as well. This might explain some of the non native English speakers you met. The institution only has to pay a training wage which is considerably less than a normal wage.

I don't really understand brookwood's question.

Britain allows people of more nationalities than any other country in the world to live and work without restriction. We also, for a variety of reasons, have had 15 years' uninterrupted economic growth and have close to zero unemployment in most of England's southeast. Our unparalled openness to foreigners (no fingerprinting every visitor here) means that foreign-managed airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair offer spectacularly low fares to London from the less well-off countries surrounding us.

So naturally, low-status jobs, which few Britons want to do, are filled by people from poorer countries. Some of those people naturally take the opportunity to learn the world's dominant language in the country where it's spoken properly. Many just save up to go home with a nest egg for further education or investment.

But many foreign workers - because there are loads of French and German workers around London too - are just taking advantage of the fact that our system creates jobs while their countries destroy them. Unemployment in France, for example is over twice that in Britain - and among 20 year olds the gap is far wider.

So why is brookwood surprised?

The hotel schooling answer is correct about front desk staff. In any large city in the US - sp in more upscale hotels - many front desk staffers are not American - they have been placed there - I don;pt know about the training wage - as part of their hotel school course.

(Many are from Cornell which has a huge school of hotel management - but others come from schools in europe.)

As for other hotel staff positions - I think the answer about full employment and foreign workers being willing to take less desireable/lower paying jobs. (This is also why about 80% of NYC cab drivers are immigrants.)

Flaner, I'd be interested in knowing the basis of your statemnt:- "Britain allows people of more nationalities than any other country in the world to live and work without restriction". Not flaming; I'd just like to know the source.

The thing about people from poorer backgrounds doing lower paid work- whether in hotels, which is a notoriously poorly paid sector, or anywhere else, for that matter, is quite true.

The UK also has a policy of allowing 2 year working holidaymaker visas to people under the age of 30 from Commonwealth countries. Whereas that used to be nearly always used by Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians for gap years, the "New Commonwealth" has caught on, and we have many people from less well heeled parts of the Empire taking us up on it now.

We also have a visa category for people in training- that takes up the Hotel School thread; and lastly we allow students from overseas to work up to 30 hours per week whilst they are in full time education here.

The lastest phenomenon, of course, has been large numbers from the "accession countries"- the 10 new EU members from last year- who have no restrictions on work or travel and who are filling hundreds and thousands of lower paid jobs. Thank goodness, because no-one else seems to want them.

I am also pretty confused by brookwood's post. In many parts of the States it is exactly the same - very, very many ESL staff in the service sector. I don't know why this should surprise since it is a generally low paid industry.

Anybody ever been to Miami?

Your observation is correct, it is very common to see foreign people in these roles. Eastern Europeans for example; are extremely happy to do these jobs,
1. They learn English
2. They earn far more than they would at home.
For example a Czech Dr friend of mine earns £400/Month in a Plzen hospital.

The other complication is that if UK people have these jobs that are paid in accordance with the minimum wage laws + tips, they cannot afford to live in London and probably never will.

This is one reason why Medical and school staff are becoming more dificult to find in London.
And hotel staff too it seems.

Muck

I'm not sure if anyone has already addressed this, but another reason is probably that Britain, as much of Europe, has either very minimal population growth or negative growth. In 2004, the population growth rate in the UK was 0.28% (not a misprint, that is considerably LESS than one percent) even taking into account the immigrants. Thus, they need the constant supply of immigrant labor because they are not producing their own workers. And, as other posters have pointed out, in a full-employment economy the less desireable jobs are often filled by non-natives who are consequently not fluent in the language.

I should withdraw my use of Miami as if it were somehow a comparison of what you're talking about. I suddenly realized that you mentioned most of those were there to LEARN English. In Miami it seems quite the opposite as many are NOT trying to learn English and make no attempt to do so. I recently talked with a woman who lost her job as a supermarket checker there because she refused to learn Spanish. Meanwhile others are still employed there who only speak Spanish and speak no English at all. The real reason they wanted this woman to learn Spanish was so that she could communicate with the managers who are unable to effectively communicate in English.
I once called a government office in Miami (regarding my mother's medicaid) and got someone who ONLY spoke Spanish. She couldn't even understand that I wanted her to connect me with someone who could speak English (or else there was no such person there), and finally she gave up so just hung up. How bad is that from a US government office?