And I am going to add something to J. Kb.’s post: Americans not only want immigrants to speak English but they will also help you. This I know since I came to the USA with enough words to ask for a cheeseburger and where the bathroom was located, other than that, I had to depend on a small dictionary and the kindness of people. And people were very kind they helped me, corrected me, invited me to parties and gatherings so I could improve my conversational skills, loaned me books, took me to movies.
What I did not do was to ghetto myself with other Spanish speakers. I did not watch TV or listened to the radio in Spanish (Truth be told, there was very little back then In Nashville which was why I picked it) and I realized that I was going to screw up big time and make a fool out of myself with strangers. But it was either ditch the pride or learn the language. Pride got locked in the closet.
If you happen to drive near schools where immigrants are concentrated, you will probably see the banners announcing Adult Education sponsored by Miami-Dade County Public Schools and they cover items for foreigners like:
Obviously, not all centers have all the classes, but there are 21 of them located through the county. One has to be near you:
The cost of the English Classes? $31.50 per semester plus the class book.
And I am going to say something to Christopher Hayes: Those of us, legal immigrants who went through the effort to become citizens and learn the language, also support the idea that immigrants know English. It is basic manners to come to somebody’s house and not only behave honorably but respect the rules and customs of the hosts.
Learning English is just common courtesy.
There are also private offerings from groups like churches and civic organizations. My mother’s church offers an ESL class for immigrants, and in addition to signing up to help cook the class dinner from time to time, her DAR chapter had the DAR citizenship manual that the past agency used to model the citizenship test on printed up for the class. It gives the students something to practice their English skills on while also giving a preview for the citizenship test should they proceed to that step. All of it is free.
After having recently returned after a four year stint in Venezuela, my mother also taught English to immigrants as a volunteer for her church.
This was 40yrs ago when we moved to Baton Rouge. I had forgotten about that.
My mom grew up Rock Springs, WY, often billed as the city with 51 nationalities. This cultural and ethnic diversity was the result of the coal company importing successive waves of immigrants, often from central and eastern Europe to work in the mines. The children were sent to school to learn english. Then at night they’d teach their parents what they’d learned that day.
Just as an aside, how bad was Italy, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Ukraine, etc that you would leave everything and everyone you knew to come to a land where you didn’t speak the language to work 12 to 16 hours a day in a filthy, hot, dangerous coal mine in Wyoming in the latter half of the 19th century?
I always thought that providing so many things translated for immigrants does everyone more harm than good.
If everything is provided to them in their native tongue, what motivation could they have to learn? There might a few who would learn out personal motivation for self-enrichment and realizing that it’s beneficial to speak the local language, but the rest will just go with the flow and wait for things to be handed to them.