Promover el bilingüismo: American children should learn Spanish, and so should American child psychiatrists.

T he central purpose of this Translation is to articulate the evidence from a range of scholarly disciplines for the importance of promoting bilingualism, particularly SpanishEnglish bilingualism, among American children. A parallel— but related—aim of this piece is to argue for the clinical and public health importance of promoting Spanish proficiency (and, hence, Spanish-English bilingualism) among American child and adolescent psychiatrists. This, I argue, is imperative to properly serve the mental health needs of Hispanic children and their families. The immigrant population has grown enormously over the previous three decades, and the past decade witnessed the largest wave of child immigration in U.S. history. In 2010, one of five children was from an immigrant family, and these figures will increase, according to some estimates, to one of three children by 2020. Most children of immigrant parents are Hispanic and vice versa, and of these children, most are U.S.born American citizens. (Other immigrant groups are of course important, including 16% of children of immigrants who are Asian.) Today, one of every four children younger than 8 years and one of every five children younger than 18 years are Hispanic. Because of the powerful immigration wave and rapid growth of Hispanic families, the