11 Million Americans Can't Read

In what comes as no surprise to anybody outside of the Department of Education and perhaps the editors at CNN, a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy has shown that 11 million Americans are illiterate. Gee, that 11 million number sure sounds familiar. Hmmm - where have I heard that figure before? Oh yeah - that's how many illegal immigrants are supposed to be in the United States.

For further support of my thesis that illegal immigration is to blame, consider these three important facts from the study:

• Whites made no advances in literacy rates from 1992 to 2003, but did show advances in computational skills.
  
• Blacks made advances in every area of the test during this same time period.
  
• Hispanics declined "sharply" during the 11 year period.

Unfortunately, the results of recent immigrants have skewed the results of the Hispanic population, so we really have no idea as to whether English speaking Hispanics have made literacy gains or not.

How do you fix this problem? Perhaps if our Houston Metro buses would stop blaring information in Spanish, immigrants would learn to comprehend English. Perhaps if we didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars coding ATM machines, printing government forms, and creating Spanish speaking phone services, Spanish speaking immigrants would actually learn to speak English. The Poles did it. The Italians, Germans, French, and every other immigrant group that came to this country over the past 200 years managed to learn English. Why is it that simpletons at LULAC push dual language services, and why is it that our short-sighted government complies?

Of course, if LULAC had their way, the next National Assessment of Adult Literacy will be conducted bilingually. Problem "solved"!

Full story on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy here.