"What's happening with current immigration?" asks Professor Waters. How much can we expect current immigrants who are non-white to experience the same level of acceptance [as their white counterparts]? What role did the rising economy after World War II play in the immigrant experience? What role did the hiatus in immigration play? What does continuing immigration mean to the future of America?

Language assimilation, states Professor Waters, follows a three-generation model: the first generation to immigrate learns some English, the second generation is bilingual but prefers English, the third generation is monolingual in English.

Professor Waters also notes that we are in the middle of a popular English-only national movement. The goals of the English-only movement are:

• To eliminate or reduce bilingual education
• To abolish multilingual ballots
• To prevent state and local money from being used to translate signs, government documents, or to provide for translators at public hospitals.

Professor Waters reports that recent surveys have shown that 63% of Americans favor a law making English our country's official language. Census data, however, shows that a large number of immigrants already speak English in the first, second, and third generations. This being the case, why are some issues (such as language assimilation or illegal immigration) more likely to be discussed than others?

What are the inconvenient facts? For pro-immigration advocates, the inconvenient facts spring from research showing the negative impact caused by immigration on the earnings of low-wage Americans. For anti-immigration advocates, the inconvenient facts stress, for example, the reality that language assimilation is proceeding apace. However, because America has continual immigration, we constantly see new people arriving who don’t speak English, and thus the strides in language assimilation are hidden. If you look at the second and third generations of immigrants, states Professor Waters, people are learning English.