Two-Cultures? Latino and Asian Language Assimilation Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

The assimilation of recent immigrants to the United States has been a topic of con-siderable debate. Conservative scholars argue that Latinos are developing a Spanish monolingual society on the United States-Mexico border. More progressive schol-ars maintain that Latinos assimilate at rates similar to other immigrant groups. This study evaluates these claims using responses from a large-representative survey in San Diego, California. We find that Latinos are much less linguistically assimi-lated than Asians and characteristics negatively associated with assimilation are more prevalent among Latinos than Asians. While social-environmental predictors suggest that Latinos are assimilating at slower rates than Asians, Latinos appear to be making steady ground in their assimilation patterns. The findings provide a nuanced perspective falling between disparate accounts of language assimilation