The ability to communicate in English has significant but unrecognized economic value in the U.S. This is especially true for millions of adult immigrants who arrive with little or no English competence, but look for work. Unless they learn much more English, they are limited to low-wage occupations and cannot move up the career ladder.

1. A New Economic Engine: Closing the Immigrant “Language Gap”
By Alvaro Lima and Peter Plastrik
The ability to communicate in English has significant but unrecognized economic value in
the U.S. This is especially true for millions of adult immigrants who arrive with little or no
English competence, but look for work. Unless they learn much more English, they are
limited to low-wage occupations and cannot move up the career ladder.
But the “language gap” is not just a problem for immigrants. It’s a problem, too, for
businesses trying to fill skilled positions, and for communities, states, and a nation
desperately seeking economic growth. U.S. labor markets are turning increasingly to
immigrants to fill jobs, but the potential employees are not prepared linguistically. As the
Baby Boom generation retires from work, an estimated 10 million skilled workers will be
leaving the workforce during just the next few years. In many parts of the U.S. most of the
increase in available workers comes from immigrants. But, a large percentage of the jobs
that will be available over the next 10 years will require at least modest English language
skills.
The gap wouldn’t be a problem if the systems most adult immigrants use to learn English
worked well. But they don’t.
Local school districts provide the majority of the nation’s adult English as Second Language
(ESL) courses, their programs funded by the federal government. Most other classes are at
post-secondary institutions. An adult who is literate in his own language and has no prior
English instruction needs between 500-1,000 hours of instruction to meet basic needs,
function on the job, and interact on a limited basis through English. Students taking six
hours of ESL classes weekly require two to three years to achieve basic language
acquisition; full fluency takes longer. But students can aim their ESL course work for
different goals, including life skills or survival ESL; family literacy programs; English literacy
and civics; vocational ESL; workplace ESL; and academic ESL[1]. While life-skills ESL
focuses developing general English language skills, workplace ESL develops and improves
English language skills directly relevant to specific work settings.
In the 2006-07 school year more than 1.1 million adults enrolled in federally funded, state-
administered ESL classes. But this served only a fraction of the actual and potential
demand. Researchers using census data estimated in 2000 that of the people who reported
speaking a language other than English at home, more than 8 million did not speak English
“well” or “at all” and an additional 7 million did not speak English “very well.” And as the
immigrant population grows in the U.S., so does demand for ESL.
It’s nothing new that immigrants face waiting lists for ESL classes; since the 1990s this has
been documented. But the problem persists. In March 2009 the federally funded Center for
Adult English Language Education stated on the FAQ page of its Web site that “Some
immigrants who want to learn English may have to wait for months or years to get into ESL
classes. In large cities across the country, ESL programs frequently have waiting lists for
classroom space. Some rural areas have no available classes.”[2]
The Center added that it
was impossible to tell how many immigrants were on waiting lists. A year earlier, however,
research by the Boston Redevelopment Authority found that some 15,000 immigrants
in Massachusetts alone were on waiting lists—six months to three years away from getting
their first English lesson. (The state contains 2.1 percent of the U.S. population.)

2. Immigrants who do get into ESL classes face even more problems, our review of the
literature on ESL found, including:
 Lack of consistency in the quality of teachers; weak rigor of the curriculum;
inadequacies in the placement assessments used. Some programs offer excellent
curricula with certified teachers and use the most finely tuned assessments.
Others have volunteer teachers, a make-shift curriculum, and use only partial
assessments—reading only or speaking only, instead of both—to help defray the
costs of the assessments.
 Adult ESL learners with very different learning profiles and needs may find
themselves in the same program. For examples, a beginning ESL class may
include educated learners who have substantial reading (and writing) skills, but
limited oral English proficiency, as well as less-educated learners who have more
advanced English listening and speaking skills (perhaps learned through
employment) but limited proficiency in reading or writing.
 Other problems include the difficulty in scheduling classes for immigrant
populations and lack of diversity of curricula that reflect the needs of the diverse
population seeking adult ESL coursework.
It’s little wonder, then, that ESL classes have trouble retaining participants. A third of all
ESL students drop out by the end of their second month in class. This is not always because
of the programs’ failures. Also figuring into the equation are personal factors such as low
self-esteem, the difficulties of working and attending class, and lack of transportation or
childcare. But researchers have noted that sometimes learners are not being well-served by
staying in a program. Lack of appropriate materials for low-level learners, lack of
opportunities to achieve success, lack of flexible scheduling, classes with mixed abilities,
and irrelevant course materials can all be reasons students choose to leave a program.
The ESL failures make it unlikely that any place—or the nation—will close its immigrant
language gap any time soon. And that has economic consequences.
In 2008 the City of Boston took a close look at its immigrant language gap. It found that
dependence on immigrant workers was increasing. In 2006 about 20 percent of
the Boston workforce was foreign born, up from 16 percent just six years earlier. Also in
2006 metro Boston contained some 88,000 immigrant workers with limited English
language skills. An estimated 93 percent of all of the new jobs that will be created in
the New England region will require at least modest English skills.
Many of the immigrant workers are employed in the lowest of the four levels of language
skills. Occupations in this niche amount to about 19 percent of all jobs. Jobs requiring low-
medium language skills account for 30 percent of jobs, while those with medium-high
language skills represent 34 percent, and high-language skills are needed for 17 percent. At
each higher level, the average annual wage of a job is also higher—from about $25,000 for
low English skills to $71,000 for high level skills.
If the 88,000 immigrants in low-language skill jobs could improve their English enough to
move up one level to a better paying job, calculated the Boston Redevelopment Authority,
their total direct and indirect income would increase by $731 million annually. That would be
good for the immigrants, their families, and the communities in which they live, and for the
businesses that needed workers.

3. But some 15,000 immigrants in Massachusetts are stuck on ESL waiting lists, instead of
improving their English skills in preparation to fill jobs. And the thousands of other
immigrants who are in ESL programs face the system’s problems that may prevent them
from learning what they need.