- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
HINDI is among the top five languages that Asian-Americans speak, an eminent expert has said in the US.
John Yang, president and executive of the Los Angeles-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), told members of the senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs that nearly two-third of the Asian-American population are immigrants with 52 per cent of Asian-American immigrants having limited English proficiency (LEP).
“LEP rates vary sharply across Asian-American communities. The top languages spoken among Asian immigrants are Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, and Hindi,” Yang said.
“The rates of limited English proficiency among these groups vary–66 per cent of immigrants from China are LEP, as are 35 per cent of immigrants from the Philippines, 72 per cent from Vietnam, 64 per cent from Korea and 29 per cent from India,” he said.
Yang also told the senators that at 79 per cent, immigrants from Burma (Myanmar now) have the highest LEP rates among the Asian-Americans and it is notable that even among the Asian-American immigrant groups with lower LEP rates, about a third of the population faces challenges in communicating in English.
He said despite misconceptions, including misleading surveys that overlooked Asian-Americans with LEP, Asian-Americans have undergone tremendous financial hardships in times of the pandemic.
“Compounding devastating health and financial impacts on the Asian American community is the onslaught of anti-Asian hate. We have seen racist harassment and violence toward Asian Americans who are wrongly blamed for COVID-19 since the emergence of the pandemic,” he said.
