And 20% feel they don’t speak English “very well!”

Let the chattering commence:

“It’s very disturbing when 1 in 5 people is not communicating in the common language,” said Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “Culturally, it creates a sort of tribalism. This country doesn’t have a predominant race or religion; it just has values. That’s a very thin bond. We have shared values and a shared Constitution; we also have to have a shared culture and language… When immigrants congregate in enclaves, they have a harder time learning English and becoming fully American… It’s time to go back to the melting pot, control the borders and let assimilation, integration and intermarriage work…”

Versus

It’s not that immigrants don’t want to integrate - it’s that they need more opportunities to learn English, said Jin Sook Lee, an assistant professor of education at UC Santa Barbara, who remembers the oversubscribed English-as-a-second-language classes she used to teach at community college…. “The fact that people speak a different language in their homes is one of the most untapped resources in our country,” Lee said. “With globalization in economics and politics, we need language competence. These speakers have a great potential to fill out this language gap in our society.”

Good points both, arguing from the two basic opposing perspectives on the still-simmering immigration debate (would you really expect less from two college professors?). They are both correct, more or less, but the split in opinion is a function of individual forecasts of prevailing politics in the next few years. Let me explain:

All research shows that immigrants are learning English at approximately the same rate as has been the norm throughout the history of the republic. Usually the 3-generation rule applies, with the 1st generation immigrants learning barely enough to get by, the 2nd generation being fully bilingual, and the 3rd generation typically being monolingual English speakers. Of course, there is great variation in this: Gov. Schwartzenegger is a handy example of a 1st generation immigrant who, despite a heavy accent, speaks English very well. There are also some groups that maintain their traditional language for freaky long times (e.g., my mother’s family, German Mennonites, came over in the 1600’s and only stopped speaking primarily German at home during WWI). The X-factor in the current immigration wave is the fact that continual replenishment of new immigrants in what has become the most prolonged immigration boom in this country’s history has simultaneously raised the profile of a single language besides English to an unprecedented degree, and has overwhelmed the rate of assimilation, resulting in a continuous growth of immigrant “enclaves.” Simply put, immigrants are coming in faster than they can be assimilated, and immigration opponents’ “doomsday scenario” is that we will eventually hit a “tipping point” wherein immigrant communities will decide en masse that there is no real benefit to assimilation as there will be plenty of goods and services offered in their own language nationally. Of course, no one can really agree as to where this tipping point would take place — to date, it’s just conjecture. There’s no need to point out that there are individuals who already reject assimilation — that just proves the fact that individuals do so, not entire immigrant populations. For every Aztlan-embracing, conspiracy-theory mongering person who bitterly rejects assimilation into the American mainstream (while continuing to demand access to its material benefits), many others proudly embrace citizenship together with its rights and responsibilities. Besides, America is rejected by some of its own sons and daughters (paging Ward Churchhill and Bill Ayers).

The real divide between the two sides comes in their conjecture on the future state of immigration. If immigration continues at the same rapid rate that we have witnessed for the last 20 years, and continues to outpace the forces of assimilation, then we will begin to fracture on ethnic/nationalist grounds. It’s the (oft unspoken) law of the world: distinct nations (re. ethnic/language groups) living together within the same country will eventually start to squabble. Imagine a headline that, say, “60%+ of all Americans speak something other than English at home.” It would necessarily mean a seismic cultural shift in the country. While the language teacher in me starts to swoon at the thought of so many bilinguals, the practical side of me looks at my birthplace (Canada) and does not wish that sort of nationalistic in-fighting on this nation. The flip side of the divide is to assume that current rates of immigration can not possibly continue unabated, whereupon one has to wonder what all the fuss is about. If immigration rates dip, and the country experiences a bit of a breather (which historically, it always has), then all present immigrants will be assimilated over the coming generations and this will all be a historical footnote. This is why last summer’s “amnesty wars” in the Senate and the House were so contentious and so important, because ultimately they proposal under discussion had the potential to cause the above headline to read nationally within 20-50 years. Of course, there are other intervening factors. The present economic downturn catastrophe is likely to put the brakes on immigration for a bit. Any serious efforts at enforcement against illegal immigration (I know, not bloody likely given the current two candidates for POTUS) would also have an effect. There was a noticeable drop here in AZ after the new employment laws went into effect this year. Any factor that deprives immigration of constant influx of “new blood” will reinvigorate assimilation. Ultimately, if immigrants view their livelihoods and well-being as being connected to the larger community — and not just an “ethnic enclave” — they will, by-and-large, embrace the English language and American culture just as previous generations have.

Via Global Nation, a Filipino journal…  Good thoughts on the new hyper-connected world and accurate (if somewhat basic) information on how to raise bilingual children..

As the world become borderless, relationships too became borderless. Families with multicultural origins are now common….  A good example of how new understanding has impacted on families is the use of different languages at home. Bilingualism or multilingualism was a big no-no in olden times. The old prejudice is that multilingualism confuses children, who will learn neither their own nor the other language (s).

BusinessWeek lists the pros and cons in a point/counterpoint feature.

After all, according to the Census Bureau’s March 2007 report, there are 37.9 million immigrants in the U.S. speaking 311 languages. Standardization of a language is necessary at some level, so why not start at the elementary one by saying “Hi, my name is Carlos” in English?

vs.

America was founded on the principle of fairness, of giving everyone a chance to make his or her own way in life—not on language skills. Immigrants who have fulfilled all the other requirements (good moral character, knowledge of U.S. civics and history, five years’ residency) should, like the ancestors of everyone in this country who is not a Native American, be allowed to become a U.S. citizen without fulfilling a stringent language requirement.

The point that is largely missed in that basic language skills are a requirement of citizenship.  More at issue is the standardization of testing and the definition of how rigorous should such a test be.  The fact is, English-testing for would be citizens varies tremendously in level and seriousness from locale to locale.  My wife just went through this whole process (and was just naturalized last week — congrats, honey!), so of late, I’ve been taking a close look at the whole process.  My wife went through a pretty middle-of-the-road level exam requiring her to demonstrate basic literacy (i.e., read a few sentences of text), and she took an oral interview test which doubled as the civics exam (i.e., questions about U.S. history and government).  However, another friend who took the exam some years back took stringent written exams (although, having largely grown up here, he wasn’t too concerned about the “English” portion on the test).  Friends in another part of the states have told me that their local USCIS office is “a joke” when it comes to testing, and that the center was ripe for a lawsuit charging discrimination in testing as the officials would pass Hispanics at any level of English proficiency (often administering the entire test in Spanish), whereas people of other origins had to complete the test in English (although, to be fair, they were supposedly equally lax in terms of what was considered to be a “passable” level of English fluency).  This was several years ago, and I can only hope that said office has cleaned up its act…

The point is that countries do have the right to define citizenship in whatever terms they want.  If you compare the requirements of the U.S. with other countries, we’re relatively easy-going about citizenship — only surpassed by Canada in overall relaxed-ness about naturalization.  We currently demand that most immigrants hold a green card for 5 years, reside in the US for most of that time, and then pass through an application process that includes a basic language and civics tests.  There are quite utilitarian reasons for having immigrants demonstrate language competency — especially in a participatory democracy.  In a country where people decide the direction and policies of government through the ballot, one can easily imagine the chaos that would engulf a system that had to cater to 311 different languages.  There’s a lot to be said for a unifying language that serves as an efficient means of disseminating news/information to all citizens.  Still, we can change the rules whenever it suits us.  If the majority of Americans ever felt that learning English was an undue burden on citizenship, we could ditch the rule.  To have a language requirement is not inherently unfair (as the con side of the article implies), and to not have said requirement is not inherently unfair (supposedly to the already-citizens).  The only inherent unfairness is if whatever regulation is unevenly or unfairly applied to different groups – whether that be due to differing geographic regions or due to nation of origin.  If we favor one group of immigrants over another — whether by waiving language requirements or (hint hint) allowing people who entered the country illegally to hop over into the line for naturalization — which others have waited patiently for (sometimes for years on end) to do so legally — we introduce an inherent unfairness into the system.

P.S. On a related note: bilingual services at the governmental level have always smacked me as unfair in the same way.  Case in point: at my wife’s naturalization ceremony, nearly all instructions were given in both English and Spanish.   Sometimes, this made complete sense — for instance, when directing the new citizens and their family/friends where to sit, one cannot readily assume that the people accompanying the new citizens would all speak English.  Being where we are in the SW USA, unsurprisingly about 2/3 of the people being naturalized were from Mexico, so the Spanish instructions to family and friends was probably both useful and (often) necessary.  However, the bilingual instructions continued at the front registration desk for naturalization ceremony participants.  This struck me as quite odd considering that all participants had just passed an English exam…  Additionally, I wondered what would happen if one of the other of the 21 nationalities represented there had requested service in their own language…  This is the quandary that many municipalities and government seats find themselves in.  On one hand, if you have resources (such as Spanish-speaking workers) who can improve communication with people coming for services, why not use them?  On the other hand, doesn’t that create a disparity between those who can be helped in their own language, and those who can’t?  My wife, as the only Chinese participant in her naturalization ceremony (I know…  just given world population, I was expecting there to be more than just her there…) neither expected nor received any Chinese support from anyone other than me (and, to be fair, another SE Asian friend who attended the event).   If there had been some sort of emergency, one wonders if she could sue them for not providing such support.  It sounds facetious, I know (honestly, I just don’t have the patience for litigation, anyway), but I suspect that the government is going to get into trouble someday for just such an issue.

I’m personally all for bilingual advertising and the like from private businesses.  That’s simply how to penetrate certain markets, and private industry has the right to refuse service or to provide service in whatever language they want (or are capable in).  Government services are a lot dicier because so many are de facto rights…  By providing native language support for some, they have twisted their own arm into providing it for all (note the signs offering interpreters in many govt. offices), but practically speaking, this is an untenable position.  Some day, either someone speaking a language that we can’t readily find an interpretor for, or someone in an emergency scenario wherein an interpreter can’t be found immediately is going to send the whole system down.  It would seem a lot easier and safer to expect English — at least from offices dealing primarily/only with citizens.

So writes the Tennessean…

I can verify that those are veritable issues to taking community ESL classes.  Most communities with any sizable immigrant population will usually offer free or heavily discounted ESL classes, often of quite reasonable quality, but for those very factors, they are very popular and usually have a daunting waiting list to get in the door.  I certainly found that much out when trying to register my wife for such classes.  Even in Arizona, which is arguably of a ground-zero for immigration, and probably better prepared, on the whole, for influxes of immigrants than Nashville, we waited 5 months or so before she could take a single class.  Of course, if you have the money (which, as a grad student, I didn’t), one can always take private classes at universities or junior colleges, but that’s not much of an option for minimum wage earners…

Transportation issues varies per individual, and commentors on the above-linked article not withstanding, it can also be a very real issue.  Even if a family has a car, it will often be gone at job sites during the day.  Stay-at-home moms often form the bulk of the students in community and church ESL classes, so child care can also factor in.  However, the biggest impediment for most people in taking classes is simply time.  Especially for the low-income, who might need both husband and wife to work full-time — and sometimes more than one job — the demands of work and parenting preclude the ability to avail themselves of these community services, which often prevents them from improving their English, which prevents them from significantly moving up the ladder socially and economically.  It’s a vicious circle…  And a problem not readily remedied…

The one non-sequitur in the logic of the article is that this issue was being high-lighted by a proposal to end bilingual ballots. If anything, that should highlight whether USCIS is actually doing their job in verifying English competency before approving immigrants for naturalization.  Such is the law.  The requirements are not insurmountably high — it certainly doesn’t require passing TOEFL, for example — but when properly administered, the test would accurately predict someone’s ability to recognize names on a ballot (as well as street signs and the like).  If people are becoming citizens  without the necessary English skills to read a ballot, we should be investigating USCIS, not looking for scapegoats in transportation issues and waiting lists…

Un-freaking-believable…  (though, mind you, not the first time we’ve seen this type of mentality..)

Chula Vista Elementary, San Ysidro and Sweetwater Union High school districts have joined six others suing the state to stop English-only testing. They are asking for the option to give the test in Spanish to students…  just as at least three other states allow…. To make their case, the districts cite the law that requires the testing – the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the 670 pages of rules that govern public education.

It’s all about the money…  Despite the tired claims of doing this “for the kids,” or “testing what kids actually know as opposed to testing their language skills,” this is all about No Child Left Behind Funding.  Period.

Here’s the reasoning: No Child Left Behind mandates annual math and reading tests. Schools are under pressure to achieve minimum pass rates or face big changes, such as providing transportation for students to attend other schools, replacing staff members or even turning over management to a private company or the state. Many schools have responded by decreasing time spent on other subjects such as science, social studies, music and art.

Simply put, low-English proficiency students hurt schools NCLB scores big-time, and they want to test the kids in Spanish to try to raise those scores.  This completely ignores the very purpose of this type of testing, which is to determine whether students are actually acquiring the academic skills they will need to compete after graduation.  Testing they in Spanish merely kicks the tin-can down the road.  Sure some students may actually know this material in Spanish, and thus score much better, but 1) that can only be assumed for students that are placed in lower grades after immigrating or if the teacher is providing the majority of instruction in Spanish (which isn’t even legal in many areas); and 2) even if the students know the material in Spanish, this doesn’t help them so much in the long run towards getting jobs, continuing education, and generally contributing towards society in a meaningful way beyond custodial/service industries.  English proficiency across all domains (listening, speaking, reading, writing) MUSTbe the highest priority of immigrant children if they aspire to any sort of decent life (I will add an exception if they plan to return to their country of origin in the near future).  Native language instruction is a powerful medium for assisting L2 instruction — I’m not saying to ban all Spanish from the classroom — but we do a mighty disservice to children when we flippantly delay their language acquisition in a painfully misguided quest to assuage their egos about some test scores. 

The distinction these school systems seem not to be getting is that of assessment vs. aptitude tests.  Assessment tests measure what you expect students to have learned in a given period, measured against a defined standard; and in this case, if they are expected to know the information in English, so be it.  That will be the expectation for them in life.  You can’t go to a job interview and respond to the boss’s questions by saying, “Well, I  do know how to do all this, but I can’t actually demonstrate that to you unless you let me do it in my own language…”  You’d get laughed out of the office.  The knowledge of English is simply an implied requirement for 99% of the jobs out there…  Aptitude tests, on the other hand, are measures of what the student already knows or potential for learning something.  Think IQ tests.  To get an accurate assessment of that, you do have to take language out of the picture.  No one would take an IQ test score seriously if it were delivered in another language.  While my IQ is *ahem* highish, I’m willing to bet that I would register as severely retarded if I had to take the test in, say, Polish.  Thus, this all depends on what type of test we’re talking about, but NCLB is quite clearly in the former category.

Video:Mary Katharine Ham (conservative-cutie-managing editor of Townhall.com) discussing this issue on Fox.  She gets mega-brownie points with the Language Doctor for pointing out what I’ve said for years — namely, that affluent people in the U.S. shell out big $$$ for immersion experience in order to learn foreign languages, so why are we so scared to give immigrant children the same opportunity, at no cost to them (or their parents)?

Update:  This thought always annoys me to no end….  Other groups (Chinese, Koreans, Arabs, etc.) do not usually have access to bilingual education, and in other ways simply don’t get the fawning educational attention as Hispanic kids do, yet they seem to be doing fine.  Why do you suppose that is?  Immersion seems to work just fine for them…  Are bilingual militants implying that Hispanics are somehow less capable?  I’ve got some Mexican colleagues in my PhD program who would kick your rear for the mere suggestion……

It’s not just the land of Lord of the Rings…

Good thoughts on how languages build barriers between people.  It’s interesting that author recounts being yelled at for not immediately approaching the saleswoman in Mandarin… 

I found the woman struggling with her answer in English. Having earlier heard her speak with another customer in Chinese, I repeated the question again in Mandarin.  But instead of an easy answer, what I had to face next was a telling off by the salesperson for not using Mandarin despite knowing it. The woman, who said she was from Beijing, equated it to my lack of pride in being Chinese.

All too common, really, and not just Chinese people.  Being a heritage speaker, or even someone of similar ethnic extraction as the TL community who learned the TL as a second language seems fraught with this type of peril.  Life becomes a guessing game of sorts, trying to figure out which language to approach each person in in order to avoid minimize offense.  I had an Asian-American friend in Japan who had roughly the same level of Japanese as me (advanced, communicative, but still not gonna pass as a native very often).  Despite our similar speaking levels, the reactions we provoked, however, were very different.  While my Japanese was met with constant astonishment and praise because noone expected someone who looks like me(read: “honky”) to speak Japanese, my friend was often treated like an idiot because she wasn’t immediately recognizable as a foreigner. 

Our identities are in no small way tied up in the language(s) we speak, and this can cause confusion all around when the “sound and picture are out of sync,” so to speak.  While this may seem strange to people from multi-ethnic communities, to most of the world, native language and ethnicity are still virtually synonymous.

So says a Quebec language advisory board.  This is the type story that I’m sure a lot of my colleagues would point to and say, “You see!  Likewise, one can’t force US immigrants to learn English” – to which they’d be completely correct.  You can’t forceanyone to learn anything that they don’t want to.  However, immigration policies should ideally favor those potential immigrants who are most likely to want and try to integrate.  The desire to retain your own unique national character is not racist — it is merely part of human nature.  For those who suggest that to expect immigrants to try to integrate into the culture of their newly adopted home is racist, I have one question: is it also racist for immigrants to practice their own culture in the new land?  Seriously…  You can’t call one racist without decrying the other, because they both spring from the same thought.  Both the immigrant and the native are both engaging in a form of cultural chauvinism in assuming that what they do is “the way to do it” (and often the “best” way).  Both hold their own beliefs/values/practices to be more reputable.  So why don’t we every hear about the “racism” of those who move to another country and then publicly reject or even renounce its culture, language, and traditions?  Hmmmm…

Still, for disclaimer’s sake, the Quebec situation is a bit more complex than simple immigration woes.  While there are certainly immigrants everywherewho just don’t quite get the hang of the language of their host nation, the situation in Quebec is complicated by the side-by-side existence of English and French in Quebec.  Many new immigrants to the region (who are native speakers of a third language) are attracted to English study more than to French.  This is often simply practical, as many of them will have studied English for years in compulsory education before immigrating, but can also sometimes reflect the thought of English as the more commercially powerful tongue.  That, my friends, is why Québécois politicians want to foster compulsory French classes on immigrants via the Quebec identity act.

More from the Arrogant Polyglot.

Thereby disproving the “sunshine and lollipops” theory of immigration… 

Soapbox time: If you have kids, seriously give some thought before dropping everyone and moving to a foreign country.  The vast majority of immigrants both to and from Western countries are economic migrants, and when they come with kids, they run the risk of seriously traumatizing the li’l ones.  Simply put, integration is hard anyway, but when you’re a child, it can be overwhelming.  Sure, there are success cases, but there are also a lot of jaded children of immigrants out there.  Just be careful in the decision.  Don’t leap at the first thought of higher $$$ or the ability to stretch your meager savings into a permanent beach vacation.  Think about your child first — is the kid going to benefit from the travel experience, or by saddled with the burden of re-learning everything he/she thought he knew about language, culture, and “the rules of school.”

No, says the Denver Post. While I’ve heard a lot of doom-sayers out there who contend that we are slowly being converted into an Spanish-speaking nation, and while, even though I speak Spanish, I too find the “press 1 for English…” thing too aggravating for words (I think I’m mostly bothered by anything that makes me have to listen to voice recordings any longer than I have to), the evidence is overwhelming that Spanish speakers are assimilating every bit as fast as every other generation of immigrants. As the Post points out, “fully two-thirds - 64.8 percent - of second-generation young people indicated that they prefer to speak English only” (and, quite frankly, one has to wonder about the circumstances of that other 35.2%). As I’ve pointed out before, there are two X-factors that drive the current perception of non-assimilation. The first is the dragged out nature of this immigration wave, which continuously brings new immigrants in. The casual observer simply notes that he/she is always surrounded by people who seem unable/unwilling to speak English, but day-to-day and year-to-year these are different people. In certain sectors of the economy — especially the service sector — it may seem that you are forever ordering your Whopper from someone who can barely pronounce the word, but in a nutshell, what happens is that as new immigrants solidify their language skills, they can move into higher (less visible) jobs, and they are immediately replaced with someone newer to the country and language. The other X-factor, which could well have an actual effect on overall assimilation is that a lot of the current wave of immigration is coming from a neighboring country, encouraging immigrants to keep closer ties with home. Even amongst those who cross oceans to get here, improved telecommunications and cheaper air travel have the same effect. While this author has yet to see any definitive studies on whether or not these phenomena have had any negative effect on the assimilation of 1st generation immigrants, it has been fairly well debunked that there is any effect on their kids. As the article says, “when it comes to language, ‘The assimilative power of American society is overwhelming,’ wrote Ruben G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portales, professors of sociology at the University of California-Irvine, and Princeton, respectively.” This does not mean we won’t see changes — especially in the educational domain. Witness the effects that are already being noted in places not exactly renowned for being hotbeds of immigration like…. Ohio????

So why do we suddenly see Spanish everywhere — on TV, on billboards, in restaurants; and why the annoying phone “press 1 for English?” These phenomena merely jump out at us because they are new. Such technologies and mass advertising didn’t exist during the last immigration wave. Still, it bears noting that scholars will point out that, at the beginning of the 20th century, NYC was flooded with Italian-language adverts and newspapers. Some areas of the midwest had defacto German-language villages and towns until the first world war. Other language communities have always existed in the U.S., and always will. We should not be surprised if businesses try to make money advertising their services to them…

The second part of the article — about the perils of the U.S. being a “linguistic graveyard” at the dawn of the 21st century are well-deserving of a separate article. We’ll hit on that tomorrow.

Sigh…  I am continually distressed by the “for the kids” argument for immigration — particularly in the context of illegal immigration.  It’s disingenuous — most parents are primarily swayed by economic arguments — which primarily benefits themselves.  Sure, their kids may end up with vastly improved educational and lifestyle opportunities, but the kids will also face problems that the parents can barely even conceive of.  Due to their age, increased susceptibility to peer pressure, necessity of schooling, etc., immigration impacts children much more deeply than it does parents.  Depending upon the age of immigration, parents can end up permanently disenfranchising their children from any real sense of national identity.  Children who grow up in the U.S. will often lack the requisite L1 language skills and education to “go back to the home country” — whether or not their parents do.  The pressures of navigating academic learning in a second language often retards learning, and can make failures out of kids who, given the stability of their native educational system, would have excelled.  Now, mind you, all of this is worst case scenario…  There are many kids who immigrate and just blossom in their new surroundings.  The key component (just like with any kids) is parental involvement in education — which of course becomes difficult if you’re raising your kids in a country where you can’t speak the language fluently yourself. 

This is not to say that no-one should ever immigrate, but merely that parents need to think through these issues, and not be blinded by potential salaries in the new country.  Immigrating illegally immeasurably increases the difficulty by compounding the children’s insecurity with legal issues that will haunt them throughout their residency in the new country.  Potential immigrants need to think through the impact their decision will make on their kids.