A Language and Education Profile of Immigrants in The United States

A Language and Education Profile of Immigrants in the United States Plus, Barriers to Naturalization in the United States and
International Migrants in South Korea
Because immigrants bring along their cultures and languages when they settle in their new destinations, you may hear, for instance, Polish and Russian in Illinois, Somali and Swahili in Minnesota, Spanish and Haitian Creole in New York, Korean and Armenian in California, or Arabic and German in Michigan. This month, we have updated our US Foreign Born Data Tool with key national and state-level statistics on immigrants' linguistic diversity, English language skills, and educational attainment (using statistics from the 2011 American Community Survey). Visit the "Language and Education" fact sheets for a state-by-state (or national) look at characteristics of the foreign born, which include statistics on languages spoken by immigrants, their levels of education, rates of English proficiency, and a comparison to native residents. Here are some topline findings: *Habla Espaol? Spanish is the most common language spoken by people who speak a language other than English at home. Nationwide, of the 60.6 million people who speak a language other than English, 62 percent speak Spanish. Spanish was also the top spoken language other than English in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Only in five states did another language predominate (see Table 5, Language Other Than English Spoken At Home): Alaska, where 30 percent spoke native North American languages, followed by Spanish (21 percent) and Tagalog (13 percent); Hawaii, where 35 percent spoke various Pacific Island languages, followed by Tagalog (17 percent) and Japanese (14 percent); Maine, where 54 percent spoke French, followed by Spanish (15 percent) and German (4 percent); North Dakota, where 27 percent spoke German, followed by Spanish (23 percent) and native North American languages, including Navajo (6 percent); and Vermont, where 32 percent spoke French, followed by Spanish (21 percent) and German (6 percent). * Immigrants are concentrated at the high and low ends of the education continuum: Nationally, 27 percent of immigrant adults had a bachelor's degree or higher (compared to 29 percent of the US born). In contrast, the share of immigrant adults with less than a high school diploma was 32 percent (compared to 11 percent for the US born). Naturalized US citizens were much more likely to have a college degree than noncitizens (33 percent versus 22 percent).
* High demand continues for English language instruction: In 2011, 20.5 million immigrants were Limited English Proficient (LEP) defined as persons age 5 and older who reported speaking English "not at all," "not well," or "well" and accounting for 51 percent of all immigrants over age 5. The highest LEP shares among immigrants were found in both traditional and new immigrant-destination states: Texas (60 percent), Nebraska (59 percent), California (58 percent), and New Mexico (58 percent). Check out our LEP data brief on the number, share, growth, and linguistic diversity of the LEP population at the national, state, and metropolitan area levels here. To learn more about language and educational characteristics of the immigrant and native-born populations, visit the Data Hub's 2011 ACS/Census tool online and select the state you are interested in (or click on the small map of the United States for national data). Fact sheets covering immigrants' workforce and income characteristics will be updated in the coming months. Graph of the Month Naturalization the process of an immigrant becoming a citizen is an important milestone on the path to full social and economic integration and membership in the host country. In the United States, naturalized citizens can vote and run for public office (except for President and Vice President), receive protection from deportation, have full access to public benefits, are eligible to sponsor relatives from abroad, and can obtain a US passport, which makes it easier to travel to many countries around the world. In 2011, the number of naturalized US citizens stood at 18.1 million (or 45 percent of all immigrants). An additional 8.5 million were eligible to become US citizens. However, not all immigrants who are eligible choose to or can take the next step toward full membership. (For more about the economic and social benefits of citizenship and barriers to naturalization, read here). A recent report by Pew Hispanic Center found, for instance, that Mexican immigrants had a low rate of naturalization (only 36 percent of those eligible became naturalized). In contrast, 68 percent for all nonMexican immigrants and 61 percent of Latin American immigrants (excluding Mexico) naturalized when they become eligible. A nationwide survey of Hispanic immigrants found that barriers such as a lack of English proficiency and difficulty of the US citizenship test made naturalization difficult for about 26 percent of survey respondents. An additional 18 percent reported that the $680 naturalization fee put the goal out of reach. Reasons for Not Naturalizing (Share among survey Hispanic respondents who were permanent residents)
Source: Pew Hispanic Center, The Path Not Taken: Two-thirds of Legal Mexican Immigrants are not U.S. Citizens, 2012. Available here. DATA HUB QUIZ South Korean musician PSY is arguably one of the most famous Koreans today catapulted to fame by the catchy Gangnam Style tune that spawned die-hard fans and die-from-laughter parodies around the world. But PSY can't claim that he was the first to open the doors of South Korea to others; as the last two decades testify, thousands of people not only visited but also stayed to live, study, and work in Korea. Whereas in 1990 the number of international migrants (i.e., non-Korean citizens) was barely 50,000, by 2012 it had grown by leaps and bounds. Can you guess the number of migrants in Korea today: Is it 500,000, 1 million, or close to 1.5 million? Check your answer here. HAVE YOU READ... Ripe with Change: Evolving Farm Labor Markets in the United States, Mexico, and Central America By Philip Martin and J. Edward Taylor Mexico is in the transitional phase of being both farm labor exporter and importer: serving as the major supplier of hired labor to US farms but increasingly also relying on farm workers from Guatemala. This report examines the labor market dynamics of the region, focusing on changes in the volume and composition of production, the supermarket revolution in Latin America, training and education changes, and more. It assesses the implications of these changes on workers and migration.
On behalf of the MPI Data Hub team, thank you for your interest in and support of the Data Hub.
Data Manager and Senior Policy Analyst Migration Policy Institute data@migrationpolicy.org
The MPI Data Hub is a project of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Find out more about MPI at http://www.migrationpolicy.org/. Join Our List If a friend has forwarded this email to you and you would like to continue receiving these updates, click here. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe. Comments and suggestions Drop us a line with your comments and suggestions.

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A Language and Education Profile of Immigrants in the United States Plus, Barriers to Naturalization in the United States and

International Migrants in South Korea

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