L – E - P

A recently released report says that half of the immigrants in the US suffer from LEP – Limited English Proficiency.

Really?

What gave you your first clue, and how did this become news today?

The Migration Policy Institute says that 20.4 million immigrants, about 8% of our population, speak no English or speak it “less than very well.”  The percentage is 19% in California and 14% in Texas.

The LEP population is most likely to speak Spanish. “Spanish was the predominant language spoken by both immigrant and U.S.-born LEP individuals. About 64 percent (16.2 million) of the total LEP population spoke Spanish, followed by Chinese (1.6 million, or 6 percent), Vietnamese (847,000, 3 percent), Korean (599,000, 2 percent), and Tagalog (509,000, 2 percent). Close to 80 percent of the LEP population spoke one of these five languages.”