Children of Hispanic Immigrants Continue to Favor English

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes,  December 8, 2004

Children of Hispanic Immigrants Continue to Favor English, Study of Census
Finds
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - English remains the language of choice among the
children and grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants, despite continuing
waves of migration from Latin America and concerns from some analysts that
English may lose ground to Spanish in some parts of the United States, a
new analysis of census data shows. The study, conducted by researchers at
the State University of New York at Albany, is the latest foray in a
fierce debate about whether the stream of immigration from Latin America
will challenge traditional assimilation patterns charted by the
descendants of European migrants.

Scholars say that the descendants of most European immigrants who arrived
in the late 19th and 20th centuries became exclusively English-speakers
within three generations. In recent years, some people have questioned
whether the descendants of Hispanic immigrants will follow suit, given the
surge in Spanish-speaking arrivals and the emphasis on multiculturalism
and increased globalization. The study, which examined data from the 2000
census, found that most Hispanic-Americans were also marching steadily
toward English monolingualism. The report found that 72 percent of
Hispanic children who were third-generation or later spoke English
exclusively.

The report suggested that the trend had generally continued among
Mexican-Americans, the country's largest immigrant group, even during the
immigration boom of the 1990's. In 1990, 64 percent of third- and
later-generation Mexican-American children spoke only English at home, the
study showed. By 2000, that figure had risen to 71 percent. Richard Alba,
director of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional
Research at SUNY-Albany, says the study suggests that many people have
underestimated the pressures of assimilation, which continue to drive
immigrants and their descendants toward English as they seek success in
the American mainstream.

Even for Hispanics in Los Angeles, a magnet for immigration from Latin
America, the pattern of language shifts across generations remained
similar to those among Hispanics nationally, he said. "A number of people,
whether from the left or the right, are underplaying the contemporary
signs of assimilation," Mr. Alba said. "They are viewing American society
as much more fractured along ethnic and cultural lines than really appears
to be the case. There are fault lines, but they are not as deep as people
think."

Mr. Alba reported some notable exceptions to the trend, finding that
larger percentages of Hispanics maintained bilingualism in the third
generation than did their earlier European counterparts. Such bilingualism
mainly occurs in communities along the Mexican border, where Spanish has
been widely spoken for generations, and among Dominican immigrants who
maintain close ties to their home country, the study found. Samuel P.
Huntington, a professor of political science at Harvard who touched off a
furor this year by warning that continuing high levels of Hispanic
immigration might "eventually change America into a country of two
languages, two cultures and two peoples," said he agreed with Mr.  Alba's
findings.

But he said that Mr. Alba's study reflected the experiences of the
descendants of Hispanic immigrants who arrived in the 1960's, when the
large waves of Latin American migration to the United States were just
beginning. He said the study did little to predict the experiences of the
grandchildren of more recent Hispanic arrivals. In 2003, about 33 million
foreign-born people lived in the United States, accounting for nearly 12
percent of the population, census statistics show. Fifty-three percent of
those immigrants were born in Latin America and half had arrived since
1990.

"We had this huge increase of immigration in the 1980's and 1990's. What
will the grandchildren of these immigrants be like?" Mr. Huntington said.
"How will they balance their conflicting identities as Hispanics, Mexicans
and Americans? It's going to be a very different situation. You can't
simply assume that this third generation that will emerge in a couple of
decades is like the third generation that exists now." "If current trends
continue," Mr. Huntington said, "we will move in the direction of becoming
a bilingual society. Is that going to be a disaster?  Not necessarily. But
it will make us a different country than we have been in the past."

Mr. Alba said available statistics did not suggest a substantive change in
historical patterns. His view was echoed by Rubn G. Rumbaut, co-director
of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at
the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Rumbaut, who was a co-director
of the largest multiyear survey of the children of immigrants, said his
findings showed that continued bilingualism among Hispanics did not occur
at the expense of English.

"It's additive, not subtractive," Dr. Rumbaut said. "English is still
overwhelmingly preferred, even by Mexican-born young people who came as
young children and are living on the border."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/08/national/08english.html