English Instruction Touted for Immigrants

This article gives many more details about the report asking for $4 billion a year to be spent to teach English. DP

By Karin Brulliard, Washington Post Staff Writer

washingtonpost.com: Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year for the next six years to make legal and illegal adult immigrants proficient in skills crucial to their assimilation and the economic future of a country whose population is increasingly foreign-born, a new national report says.

In the first nationwide study of its kind, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that an additional $200 million a year is needed to improve legal immigrants' English skills enough for them to pass a citizenship test and "fully participate in the country's civic life." An additional $2.9 billion a year is required for illegal immigrants to meet those standards, the report says.

Federal and state governments currently spend about $1 billion a year on English as a Second Language instruction for adults, most of which comes from the states.

The report calls English acquisition by immigrants the "most important integration challenge" facing the country. English proficiency among immigrants is linked to higher earnings and tax contributions, lower welfare dependency and greater educational and economic advancement in the second generation, the study notes. Given global economic competition and the stagnant growth of the native-born labor force, spending on English instruction should be seen as an investment, the authors argue.

"It's not just a cost," said Margie McHugh, a researcher at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute and one of the study's authors. "There are returns on this investment."
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