Jewish Life Digital Edition October 2015 | Page 10

ROUND-UP

NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

SIGNIFICANT OIL DEPOSIT FOUND IN ISRAEL

T E X T C OM PIL E D BY L IZ S A MUE L S

ARABIC IS FASTEST-GROWING
LANGUAGE IN USA
Data from the United States Census Bureau show languages spoken in Muslim countries are surging into US households due to the rapid growth in immigration from Muslim nations. The Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) reveals Arabic and Urdu – Pakistan’s national language
– are the fastest-growing foreign languages spoken at home, according to
a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies. After five decades of
large-scale immigration, a record 63.2 million US residents, or more than
one in five, speak a language other than English when at home.
Previous reports have shown that the US is now the second-largest Spanish
speaking country in the world. But the new census study shows the fastestgrowing foreign languages, in percentage terms, are languages spoken by
immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.
The findings of this report reinforce other studies, which show that Muslim
immigration is the fastest growing bloc of new immigrants. Every year the US
voluntarily imports more than a quarter of a million – or 280 000 – Muslim migrants (this figure includes permanently resettled immigrants, guest workers,
refugees and foreign students). All of these immigrants are invited into the US
on visas and therefore have the opportunity to collect welfare, resettle their
relatives, and eventually apply for citizenship and voting rights.
Arabic is now the most common language spoken by refugees, and 91.4%
of recent refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.
The report’s author, Steve Camarota, told Breitbart News: “Immigration is not
just an economic issue. English as our common language is part of the glue that
holds our country together. These numbers suggest that the levels of immigration are so high that it may strain that. After the last great wave of immigration
more than a century ago, the level of immigration was reduced and remained
low for half a century, which helped with assimilation. With no pause in immigration levels in sight, the nation is headed into uncharted territory.”
Since 1980, the share of the population that speaks a foreign language at
home more than doubled in Nebraska, more than tripled in Virginia, and
more than quadrupled in North Carolina, says the report.
Nearly one in seven school-aged children in Minnesota, Georgia, North
Carolina, Utah and Virginia speak a language other than English at home.
In California, nearly one in every two school children, or 43.9%, speak a language other than English at home.
The number of people in America who speak a language other than English
at home is now larger than the populations of Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada combined.
Published courtesy of MATZAV.COM

6 JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 89

A giant oil supply has been discovered in the southern Golan Heights and estimates are that the deposit is sufficient
to make Israel self-sufficient for many years to come. Globes
(the online Israeli business news portal) quoted Afek Oil
and Gas chief geologist Dr Yuval Bartov as saying, “We are
talking about a stratum which is 350 metres thick, and what
is important is the thickness and the porosity. On average
in the world, strata are 20m-30m thick, so this is 10 times as
large as that, so we are talking about