English Instruction Touted for Immigrants

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.