It's unexpected, until you dig down into the reasons why immigrants might not learn a new language. 1. There may be a community of your type of immigrants so y

It's unexpected, until you dig down into the reasons why immigrants might not learn a new language. 1. There may be a community of your type of immigrants so you might not need English and within the community there are trusted people who can translate, so you don't actually NEED to learn the language yourself. This is why immersion language programs work well since you're forced to learn a language. Otherwise it's much harder, even if you're motivated. 2. When they moved they likely were not given the tools to help them learn. And even if they were given some of these tools, were the immigrants able to balance work with these classes. California does this well, they have a lot of free ESL classes, which are well taught and agencies/non-profits push immigrants to attend them. 3. Learning a new language is HARD, especially when you're older. Especially if it's not similar to your existing language (learning Spanish, French, German is relatively easy for English speakers since there are many words that sound the same. Learning Russian or Mandarin or Arabic is much harder since the language aren't part of the same family). Integrating large groups into an existing community requires a lot of intentional work, no matter if that's immigrants integrating into a country or a company meeting with another. If that intentional work isn't done, you end up with silos.