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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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What portion of that 21% considered illiterate are actually literate, but just not in English. I'm sure there are many who grew up in other countries and moved here but never bothered properly learning English. Like that would be like saying 1 in 5 people cannot use a phone, because surely they have to be able to read to know how to sign in to websites and search things, and I find it hard to believe that many Americans can't use a cell phone
Spanish-speaking immigrants are often also illiterate in Spanish. It's a big challenge for educators. My kids are bilingual (not in Spanish) and their teachers perceived that as a problem. It wasn't.
And there are other immigrants who are better educated and more fluent in English than 99% of Americans.
And there are degrees of literacy. All of that 21% are not fully illiterate, they're below a standard that this institute defined. Still shameful, but not catastrophic.
You'd have to ask the literacy institute...
It looks like around one third of the illiterate group was not born in the U.S, so I would guess it's somewhere around there. That still means over half of the illiterate group was born and raised in the U.S, which to me can only be a fault of education whether they're fluent in other languages or not.