Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Assimilation? Not for these folks



Paul Bedard writes at the Washington Examiner,
More than one in five U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home, a record, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In an analysis of the recent Census American Community Survey, a huge surge was recorded in those who speak Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Urdu, Pakistan's national language.

The report from the Center for Immigration Studies documented the growth of immigrants in the United States and provided evidence of concerns new immigrants are slow to assimilate into American culture, namely by speaking English at home.

According to the Center's analysis released to Secrets Tuesday morning, in 2014, a record 63.2 million U.S. residents — native-born, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants — spoke a language other than English at home. That represents a surge of 16.2 million since 2000 and 1.4 million just since 2013.

...The largest percentage increases from 2010 to 2014 were among speakers of Arabic (up 29 percent), Urdu (up 23 percent), Hindi (up 19 percent), Chinese and Hmong (both up 12 percent), and Gujarati and Persian (both up 9 percent). Urdu is spoken in Pakistan; Hindi and Guajarati are languages of India; Hmong is spoken in Laos; Persian is spoken in Iran.

The largest numerical increases from 2010 to 2014 were among speakers of Spanish (up 2.3 million), Chinese (up 331,000), Arabic (up 252,000), Tagalog (up 115,000), Hindi (up 114,000), and Urdu (up 89,000). Tagalog is spoken in the Philippines.

Languages with more than a million speakers in 2014 were Spanish (39. 3 million), Chinese (3.1 million), Tagalog (1.7 million), Vietnamese (1.5 million), French (1.2 million), and Korean and Arabic (1.1 million each).

...Many of those who speak a foreign language at home are not immigrants. Of the more than 63 million foreign language speakers, 44 percent (27.7 million) were actually born in the United States.

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