A stunning 43 percent of California residents speak a language other than English at home, according to census figures released on Tuesday.
And 20 percent of Californians feel they don’t speak English “very well.”
By contrast, fewer than 20 percent of Americans overall speak another language at home, and fewer than 9 percent say they don’t speak English “very well.”
The San Francisco Bay area has many immigrants from Asian nations, as well as the Latin American immigrants who predominate in Southern California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The state has the largest proportion of immigrant residents among the 50 states, at 27 percent of the population, according to the census figures.
“It’s very disturbing when one in five people is not communicating in the common language,” Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of the book “Mexifornia: A State of Becoming,” told the Chronicle.
“Culturally, it creates a sort of tribalism … We have shared values and a shared Constitution; we also have to have a shared culture and language.
“It’s time to go back to the melting pot, control the borders, and let assimilation, integration and intermarriage work.”
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.