Adult Literacy

Rubio Amendment Dramatically Alters English Requirement for Undocumented Immigrants

/ The Old Crank / 5 Comments

(Updated below)

According to a press release issued by his office today, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the original Gang of Eight who drafted the original Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill that is about to be debated on the Senate floor (S. 744), plans to introduce an amendment today that would dramatically change a key provision in the bill that provides a legalization pathway for the nation’s 11,000 undocumented immigrants. (See this post for background on the bill.)

Under the current version of S. 744, a registered provisional immigrant (RPI) cannot earn legal permanent residency (LPR) unless they establish that he or she understands English at the level of proficiency needed for citizenship; or “is satisfactorily pursuing a course of study, pursuant to standards established by the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Secretary, to achieve an understanding of English and knowledge and understanding of the history and Government of the United States…”

Sen. Rubio’s amendment eliminates the “course of study” option. That is, he now proposes (after presumably agreeing to the original language) to strike the provision that stipulates that the English proficiency requirement can be met by pursuing a course of study, calling it a “loophole.”

But the “course of study” option really makes a lot of sense. We know that a considerable number of undocumented immigrants living here now probably cannot meet the level of English proficiency needed for citizenship. (One expert estimates it at about 55%. See update below.) The current bill doesn’t let them off the hook—it requires them to learn English, but it recognizes that not everyone is going to be able to meet the required level of proficiency right away, and that learning English takes time. Requiring citizenship-level English to qualify for LPR status, with no option to give those with limited English skills a chance to learn, will likely discourage many undocumented immigrants with limited English skills from seeking legal registration. This would defeat one of the major purposes of the bill, which was to encourage working, law-abiding undocumented immigrants to come forward.

UPDATE: 6/11/13, 7:50PM: According to this article, Max Sevillia, director of policy and legislative affairs for the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), agrees that the amendment would discourage unauthorized immigrants from becoming permanent legal residents:

Max Sevillia, the director of policy and legislative affairs for the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), said the amendment would create a “chilling effect” that would discourage unauthorized immigrants from becoming permanent legal residents. Sevillia said the group’s polling shows that more than 80 percent of unauthorized immigrants say they want to be proficient in English, but that the best way to help them do that is to provide high quality English classes. “They understand that English is really the gateway to improving their lives and the lives of their family,” Sevillia said. (my emphasis)

UPDATE 6/11/13, 8:00PM: Margie McHugh of the Migration Policy Institute has estimated that about 55% of undocumented immigrants wouldn’t be able to pass the English portion of the U.S. citizenship test.

What Can You do With a GED?

/ The Old Crank

Ask this guy:

By his own admission, [Snowden] was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)

Self-Promotion Sunday

/ The Old Crank

The Committee for Education Funding, a coalition of (mostly) national educational groups, released their annual response to the President’s 2014 budget proposal released on May 29th. (It was delayed due to the fact that the President’s budget was delayed.) This book is delivered to every member of Congress.

The section on the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), which I wrote (hence the self-promotion) on behalf of the National Coalition for Literacy, is on page 133 at this link (or you can just click here for the AEFLA section alone). It’s really more of a revision/edit of last year’s section. This year we also included a short anecdote, contributed by another NCL member, to start things off, which hopefully provides readers with a sense of what this funding actually means to people.

Anyway, I wanted to mention it here because I figured that some of you may find a quick summary of adult literacy funding under AEFLA (i.e. Title II of WIA) to be useful in your own advocacy efforts.

It also gives me a chance to recommend the CEF book, which really serves as much more than just a response to the President’s budget—it includes a history of education funding over the last ten years for nearly every federal education program, and includes lots of charts and graphs making the case for the federal investment in education.

Low Literacy Households

/ The Old Crank

Interesting comment to this Walt Gardner column in Education Week on the role of parents in literacy development:

The solution is to immerse children from low literacy households in literacy rich environments from as early an age as possible.

Unless you are planning to remove children from their homes entirely, children from low literacy households are still going to spend the majority of their time outside of those literacy rich environments.