>immigrants form enclaves that are durable and do not readily assimilate. That's not generally what happens in the US

I’ve spent some time in Michigan or Minnesota and haven’t taken away the same conclusions. Maybe we could agree or disagree on “generally”.

I live in San Diego, 20 miles from the Mexican border. If you want to speak Spanish in Chula Vista or other immigrant enclaves, you'll find plenty of people who speak it. However, the number of second generation immigrants who speak Spanish exclusively is as far as I can tell, negligible.

There are just too many benefits to assimilating. This isn't Quebec.

Speaking in support of the gp's point: Dearborn's community of Middle Easterners (more than just Muslims, also heavily Chaldean) speaks an awful lot of Arabic and not so much English. Similarly, the Chinese community in Ann Arbor is very insular and sticks heavily to Chinese over English.

This is not a normative statement to say that this is bad, but in this region there are immigrant groups that aren't assimilating as quickly or thoroughly as groups in other areas. Some of that is enforced temporary-ness in the case of the Chinese community in Ann Arbor, but some of it is the sheer size of the community in Dearborn -- the largest Muslim population in the Western world, not even mentioning the huge Chaldean group. (Might no longer be true after the recent refugee movement into Europe, but was true very recently.)

Give it time. How many Polish only speakers do you see in Hamtramck in spite of the large Polish-descended population there?

Do you think that has anything to do with the pols in this case and Mexicans in the GP example - that they are both Christian cultures assimilating into other Christian cultures?

You're kidding, right? The Polish, by and large, are staunch Roman Catholics whereas the United States is primarily various Protestant denominations. There's a long, long history of enmity and violence between those branches of Christianity.

47% of California households do not speak English at home.

So? There are still huge benefits to learning English, and so nearly all immigrants do -- within one generation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/21/milli...