I agree with you, communications are fundamental in this line of work, if not the most important aspect of our skills, and to my undertanding what people are worried about is these guys coming and not understanding the inter-crew comm, or radio comm; all you have to do is look at some of the guys that are here already, for example indians (whom are suppousedly "native" speakers but lots of us cannot understand at many times), mediocre english of many arabs, western europeans (even brits for some people) eastern europeans, far-east asians and even non-standard phraseology of americans canadians and some of the latin americans already here, but i think that we all have adapted, some faster than others, or would you dare to tell me the first time you wnt to india or Pakistan, or Thailand you didn't struggle a bit? . It's already here, these guys are not coming to anything completely new, most of the airlines in latin america have SOP's in english belive it or not, yeah, atc is most of the time in spanish, but as i said before, most have flown into the US and the caribbean.
I think the ICAO english standarisation is a great thing for aviation, because it will force people whom are less proficient to better themselves. My point is what is standard english anyway? standard phraseology i understand, but standard english? is it british? aussie?american? indian?
most of the guys that would be coming have that level, not all i know.. but most
cheers