Study urges $4 billion a year to teach immigrant

This report says an additional $200 million a year is needed to teach English skills to legal immigrants for citizenship tests and $2.9 billion a year to teach all the others. DP

JOURNAL WIRE REPORT

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