Immigration and Language Policy

The junctures between demographic shifts and formal social institutions are often characterized by tension and contradiction based on the policies and practices of a given society or government. This is because the psychology, culture, habits, and customs of newcomers do not always coincide with the psychology, culture, habits, and customs of those who maintain those social institutions, including formal organizations of government and public service. These frictions can be understood by evaluating institutional policies and the demographic characteristics of the population that institutions are intended to serve. This entry interprets the historical developments of language and bilingual education policy in the United States in the proportional representation of immigrants throughout the United States, from the 1880s until the present day.

During the past 140 years, language and bilingual education policies have been more restrictive when the proportional representation of immigrants in this country is relatively high and on the rise (see Figure 1). Although several grand theories have been presented to explain this scenario, there is no consensus that any one of these theories can account for the historical shifts in language ideology and policy within public schools. Given the rapid growth of immigration rates during the past few decades and a current emphasis on developing accountability systems to overcome achievement gaps (between racial and ethnic groups, children in poverty, special education students, and English language learners), the extent to which language policies will continue to restrain non-English native languages in public schools is uncertain.

The historical development of language policies in U.S. schools has been discussed by Colin Baker and Sylvia P. Jones in terms of four periods, each characterized by developing ideologies toward language diversity and changing demographic conditions in these schools. Carlos Ovando elaborated on these historical periods by identifying some of the changing political, social, and economic forces that shaped and continue to shape language policies within each period, and discussed the shortcomings of several grand theories presented to account for changes in language ideologies and policies. The first period put forward by Baker and Jones—the permissive period (1700s-1880s)—is not treated here because it largely preceded the common school movement, which by 1870 provided some sort of free elementary schooling to much of the general population. Along with a brief chronology of language policies, social, economic, and political histories, these periods are discussed in terms of the proportional representation and other attributes of the foreign-born population—as well as the population of immigrant children (first and second generation) in schools from 1970 to 2000.