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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3726 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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You’re overselling it.

The English-only population grew by 54M between 1980 and 2019. Everyone else, including multilingual and no-English, grew by 45M. And apparently the multilingual population has gotten better at English, possibly due to high-education immigrants. Source.

What would you say is the threshold for being “overwhelmed”?

The absolute numbers were close but according to your chart the percentage of ESL people doubled because they started from a much smaller baseline. In terms of perception the high-education immigrants might actually make it more noticeable since the type of people who post here are more likely to interact with those than with a roofer or gardener who speaks only Spanish.

In the past four years (which is outside your dataset) there have been 10 million illegal border crossings. Even if the multilingual population is getting better at spoken and written English, they probably lack the formal education that is required to not bastardize a countries native language.

There may have been 10m illegal border crossings recorded but it’s very unlikely the total illegal population rose from ~14m to 24m in that time.

I agree that illegal population probably hasn't increased compared to the number of illiit border crossings, but Even the low end estimate of 2.4 million is significant enough to change the English lexicon, with the high end being about 3.8 million, larger than the population of most states.

That CBP dataset includes expulsions and repatriations. Last time I looked at it, they made up most of the total; people were getting caught and thrown out. The 2023 figures look similar. There must be some getting through, but it’s going to be significantly less than 10 million.

As for bastardizing, the census link says the percentage with “very good” English was what increased. Regardless of what illegals are doing to the bottom of the distribution, the upper part is apparently learning. Or immigrating with existing skill. Perks of a lingua franca.

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