The Value of Afghan Language Skills

    Those of us who support letting most of the newly arrived Afghans stay, so long as they economically support themselves, may be skeptical that the immigrants can earn enough to get by.  Aside from low wage factory or food harvesting work, there may be a difficulty involved in meeting America's self-sufficiency requirement.  However, I have identified a market that few have even touched on.  I call this market: "reverse linguist skills".

When America went into Afghanistan, militarily, there was a desperate scramble to find linguists and translators.  In most cases, America had to find native Afghans to educate with the English language.  Being Afghans in their foundation, loyalty was always a concern and had to be repeatedly assessed.

So now, America has these tens of thousands of Afghans who, among which, speak perhaps every variant of represented languages in their native country.  They are expected to support themselves and mostly have few job skills.  Why not approach them with what could be their most lucrative market--Afghan language education.

There is no denying that there is a big market for the languages of Afghanistan.  Unless he changes his mind, Trump has said we will probably be going back into Afghanistan at some point.  If a future U.S. government official is in school, it may be more valuable to learn an Afghan language than some less valuable one, such as Latin.

As I mentioned above, linguist loyalty has been an issue.  However, these high school and college students who are adding the Afghan languages to their skill set are first and foremost Americans.

Paul Wharton

Objectivist Capitalist Medicine Promoter