Fluency in English advances migrants

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Fluency in English advances migrants

Conor Friedersdorf, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

In 1918, Teddy Roosevelt told the Kansas City Star that "every immigrant
who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or
leave the country.'' All these years later, the immigrants he referred to
have produced descendants who speak fluent English, don't realize their
great-grandparents didn't, and overwhelmingly think that today's newcomers
should learn America's language as soon as possible. A recent Fox News
poll found 78 percent favor establishing English as the official language
of the United States. That's not surprising: Large majorities favor
English-only education in public schools and English-only ballots during
elections, too.

Sure, English-language advocates sometimes take their Anglo zeal too far.
There isn't anything wrong with Mexican parents teaching their kids two
languages, or a Vietnamese family conversing in their native tongue while
waiting in line at the supermarket. It is important, however, that Mexican
parents and Vietnamese families speak the language of our presidential
elections, congressional debates and Supreme Court arguments. And it's
important that their children speak the language of our economy.  Those
who lack English-language skills are far more likely to be unemployed or
to remain at low-wage jobs throughout their lives.

Amid these realities, I often hear Americans lamenting that today's
immigrants no longer want to learn English. That overstates things.
Immigrant enclaves surely exist where few residents speak our language or
try very hard to learn it. But similar enclaves have existed for most of
U.S. history. Meanwhile, so many current immigrants are trying to learn
our language that classes designed to help them along are full. In
Massachusetts, roughly 17,000 people are on the waiting list for Operation
Bootstrap, a community program that teaches immigrants English.  In 2003,
three Houston English as a Second Language programs counted 12,000
non-English speakers on waiting lists.

"Nationwide, about 1.1 million people were enrolled in state-administered
ESL programs in 2004," the Associated Press reports. "The U.S. Department
of Education, in a yet-to-be-published study, estimates 28 percent of
adult-education programs (home to many ESL courses) had waiting lists in
2001-2002." Normally, a large government program is the worst solution to
any social ill, but education is an exception, and immigrants who want to
learn English but languish on waiting lists seem like sounder investments
than some other taxpayer-funded educational expenditures. Even if it costs
too much to get every immigrant who wants to be there into an ESL class,
can't we broadcast classes on public-access television, send them out over
radio waves and stream them onto the Internet? Can't we print a list of
handy vocabulary on the back of the green card? Can't we convince
Telemundo to broadcast English subtitles on the bottom of the screen?

Let's create a culture of learning English, one in which native speakers
appreciate how difficult that task can be and aid newcomers through formal
and informal means. Sure, there are charities and government programs now
doing just that. The scale, however, is inadequate, and even a few
thousand senior citizens willing to practice conversation with young
immigrants, or a few hundred professionals willing to donate their time
teaching immigrants how to write in English, would go a long way. Any
fluency gains made will be multiplied across generations as parents who
improve their English raise children fluent in the language.

In contrast, the failure to help willing newcomers learn English will echo
across generations. Such shortsightedness would be typical of a system
that too often establishes the wrong incentives for immigrants, failing to
encourage desirable behavior or, even worse, encouraging undesirable
behavior. Legal immigrants jump through absurd bureaucratic hoops.
Businesses that hire immigrants legally pay considerable fees and fill out
reams of paperwork. Meanwhile illegal immigrants bypass the system,
competing for jobs by taking them away from those insistent upon complying
with wage and labor laws. They are rarely punished for their
transgression. As any parent, schoolteacher or corporate-tax attorney
knows, incentives matter.

If we make legal immigration enough of an ordeal, we'll get less of it. If
illegal immigration is relatively painless, we'll get more of it. And if
immigrants continue to have a tough time learning English, fewer will
attain fluency. Isn't that what we're supposed to be afraid of? So what
are we going to do about it?


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