Banks and stores are looking for bilingual employees.

With Latin American trade the bulwark of a strong economy in Miami, most local business leaders believe South Florida's future growth requires more bilingual employees.

They also receive guidance and counseling from a Rockland County social service office that is based in the village and employs five bilingual employees.

It also tailors products to ethnic groups and has bilingual employees at branches in areas with large non-English-speaking populations.

Both companies staff bilingual employees, so can get all the information you need in either English or Spanish.

In most cases, hiring some bilingual employees is enough to stave off a complaint.

The city has made it easier for immigrants to cope with daily life by staffing hospitals, police precincts and government offices with interpreters and bilingual employees.

Yet for Hispanic as well as other bilingual employees, a chasm remains between the fees commanded by a professional translator and the value assigned a stop-gap interpreter.

Hispanic and Asian rights advocates say the situation often begets a discriminatory pattern in which bilingual employees must work harder to qualify for promotions.

Beyond that, bilingual employees may be required to speak English in critical situations like a hospital operating room or an air-traffic control tower.