|
Lucylastic -> RE: Why isn't English the First Language of US? (9/24/2015 4:17:47 AM)
|
WASHINGTON -- The Republican presidential candidates frequently employ harsh rhetoric to discuss immigration, accusing immigrants of failing to assimilate and integrate into American society. But an extensive report released this week debunks their claims, finding that immigrants make great efforts to learn English and adopt American values and customs, and that subsequent generations are entirely integrated.
The report, published on Monday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (http://www.nap.edu/read/21746/chapter/1#ix) and compiled by a panel of prominent immigration scholars, defines integration as the process by which immigrants "become American," adopting similar values and customs of native-born Americans and achieving similar socioeconomic outcomes. The research concludes that “across all measurable outcomes, integration increases over time, with immigrants becoming more like the native-born with more time in the country, and with the second and third generations becoming more like other native-born Americans than their parents were.”
Among its specific findings: immigrants and their children do learn English -- and, contrary to GOP candidates' scaremongering, immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than the average American.
Learning English
Politicians frequently chide immigrants for not learning English. During CNN’s Republican presidential debate last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- actually one of the GOP’s more moderate voices on immigration -- said he opposes other Republicans’ proposals to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., but said they should learn English to remain in the country.
“They can come here, but they should learn to speak our language,” he said. He then quipped: “I don’t speak it very well, but look how far I’ve come.”
.
The importance of learning English is a common refrain in conversations about undocumented immigrants. Even candidates who support immigration reform, like Graham, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), say that a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants should include a requirement that they learn English.
While the new report acknowledges that immigrants often speak their native language at home, it also found that a majority of them are in fact learning English, or already know it. Sixty-six percent of immigrants who speak a foreign language at home also can speak English "very well" or "well,” according to the research.
“Today’s immigrants are actually learning English faster than their predecessors,” the report says, in part because many immigrants come from countries where English is already widely used or taught in schools.
Thirty-eight percent of new legal immigrants took a class in English before coming to the United States, according to research cited in the report. And almost all immigrants have “consumed at least one form of English language media prior to departure,” which also helps improve their knowledge of the language.
In general, the children of immigrants are learning English at faster rates today than in previous generations, the report says. Typically, the grandchildren of immigrants to the U.S. and their descendants only know how to speak English.
Crime
Another Republican allegation against immigrants is that they create more crime. Famously, reality television star and real estate mogul Donald Trump kicked off his presidential campaign this year by calling undocumented immigrants from Mexico "rapists" and accusing them of “bringing crime.” On the campaign trail, he has repeatedly brought up the murder of Kathryn Steinle, a San Francisco woman killed by an undocumented immigrant, as evidence of rising crime committed by immigrants.
But this “immigrant crime wave” is a myth, according to this week’s report. Researchers found that crime rates in immigrant communities are much lower than national averages. Immigrants are “much less likely” to commit crimes, and communities with high immigrant populations have lower crime rates than “comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods.” Additionally, immigrants have lower rates of incarceration than the average population, even after including immigrants who are in jail for violating immigration laws.
|
|
|
|
