Boyles uncritically let guest Tancredo distort rate at which U.S. Hispanic community speaks English

Summary: Peter Boyles of 630 KHOW-AM on May 20 agreed with Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's statement that "in far too many cases, even into the second and third generation," Hispanic immigrants "are not speaking English," and his assertion that "the real threat" to U.S. society is "immigration without assimilation." In fact, research shows that English is the dominant language of a large majority of third-generation Hispanic-Americans.

On his May 20 630 KHOW-AM broadcast, host Peter Boyles did not challenge the assertion by his guest, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), that "the problems with assimilation with the Hispanic community" were that "in far too many cases, even into the second and third generation, we find that they are not speaking English," and that "the real threat" to U.S. society was such purported "immigration without assimilation. " Boyles did not acknowledge March 2007 research published by the American Political Science Association (APSA) showing that among third-generation Hispanic-Americans over age 18, 71 percent used English as their dominant language and only 2 percent spoke primarily Spanish, with the remaining 27 percent reportedly bilingual in English and Spanish.

Similarly, Boyles did not acknowledge the findings in a November 2007 report of the Pew Hispanic Center that while "fewer than one-in-four (23%) Latino immigrants reports being able to speak English very well," the number jumps to "fully 88% of their U.S.-born children," and "[a]mong later generations of Hispanic adults, the figure rises to 94%."

Boyles and Tancredo discussed Hispanic assimilation in the context of a May 17 incident in which, as the Rocky Mountain News reported, Denver police shot to death a Mexican immigrant with limited English-language ability "when he failed to heed officers' orders to drop a knife he was wielding during [a] family gathering."

From the May 20 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

TANCREDO: And Pete, let me tell you that this is something that we observe and we talk about in terms of the problems with assimilation with the Hispanic community and others, but the Hispanic community also is prone to this, where you have the first generation -- in this case it sounds like the [victim's] niece, you say, spoke English, but in far too many cases, even into the second and third generation, we find that they are not speaking English and they are not assimilating into this society. They're still are connected emotionally and even politically to Mexico. And that is because, of course, the border has certainly moved northward. The -- I went down to Brownsville, Texas, not too long ago to a hearing on the fence, and time after time after time people came up and said to me -- or, they didn't come up -- they were yelling, sometimes, from the audience. Then they'd say, "You can't build a fence here, you can't build a fence here, because you'd be splitting communities." And I kept saying, "No, you don't understand; we're actually talking about putting a fence between two countries." And they keep saying, "No, it's a community." Well, what's the community? Let me tell you, the community is the community of Hispanics from Mexico. And they consider themselves connected there far more than they do to the United States of America. And that is the problem with massive assimilation -- I mean, massive immigration from a particular area when you do not have assimilation that goes along with it. And this is the greater problem we face, that I've said all the time. It's not just the numbers of people coming to the United States having to learn English, getting jobs, some of them coming illegally. Those are all problems, but they're a lot more easily dealt with than the problem of coming here and not assimilating, and that is what is happening. It's happening on a large scale. People don't want to admit to this, but that's the real threat to this society. It is immigration without assimilation.

BOYLES: I agree.

Contrary to Tancredo's suggestion that many U.S. Hispanics descended from immigrants "even into the second and third generation ... are not speaking English," a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and at the University of California, Berkeley, published in March 2007 in the APSA journal Perspectives on Politics, found "linguistic assimilation of Hispanic immigrants from one generation to the next, regardless of age, educational attainment, or the ethnic makeup of their residential environment." The study continued:

Only 6 percent of first generation immigrants are English dominant, compared to 32 percent of the second generation and 71 percent of third generation Hispanics, only 2 percent of whom are Spanish dominant. Interestingly, the impact of age within immigrant generations is quite weak, but it is notable that the younger members of the second generation, those socialized in the post-1970 era of more immigration and burgeoning multiculturalism in public policy, are no more likely to be bilingual than the older members of that immigrant generation. This finding runs counter to Huntington's suggestion that the retention of Spanish is on the rise. Within the second generation, there is some evidence of "segmented" assimilation, with 24 percent of those lacking a high school education remaining Spanish dominant compared to just 3 percent of those who had attended college. By the third generation, however, the connection between language use and educational attainment is greatly attenuated. These survey-based data conform to the results of recent sociological analyses of census data in Alba and Nee and Bean and Stevens, but with the advantage of the ability to distinguish among first, second, and third generations. [italics in original]

Summarizing "a new analysis of six Pew Hispanic Center surveys conducted this decade among a total of more than 14,000 Latino adults," the center stated, "Nearly all Hispanic adults born in the United States of immigrant parents report they are fluent in English." According to the report:

This finding of a dramatic increase in English-language ability from one generation of Hispanics to the next emerges from a new analysis of six Pew Hispanic Center surveys conducted this decade among a total of more than 14,000 Latino adults. The surveys show that fewer than one-in-four (23%) Latino immigrants reports being able to speak English very well. However, fully 88% of their U.S.-born adult children report that they speak English very well. Among later generations of Hispanic adults, the figure rises to 94%. Reading ability in English shows a similar trend.

As fluency in English increases across generations, so, too, does the regular use of English by Hispanics, both at home and at work. For most immigrants, English is not the primary language they use in either setting. But for their grown children, it is.

—E.B. & J.F.B.