But most under 14 do, in fact.
The "problem" here is illusory; this is NO DIFFERENT than all the mass immigrations in this nation's past.
Illegal immigration--a real problem--aside, those who act like this is the end of the world are simply ignorant. One generation from now, this population will speak English primarily.
Two generations, and the vast majority of them won't even know Spanish anymore.
Oh, like Chinatown huh?
I wish I could share your optimism. Maybe that's been the experience in Texas but in L.A. the spanish speakers intend to make this state a culturally "spanish" state. They are not just lazy, they are adamant against assimiliating into the American culture.
I worked two blocks from Pico and Union back before the Rodney King riots. There was an appliance store in that building which did business entirely in Spanish. This is not just spanish in the home, it is all spanish all the time , everywhere. (BTW, the looting and arson around my office building was done not by blacks protesting the King beating but by hispanic men, women, and children looking for freebies.) That store now owns the entire building and the last time I drove by, everything is still in spanish.
"[T]his is [not] the end of the world ..."
No, of course this is not the end of the world. It is just the end of America culturally. America will go on with a new culture. History will look back and assign actions it takes to be "American" but it will bear little relation to what our nation was when it was founded, and instead will have transformed into a very different society.
That didn't happen in Canada with Quebec, or in Kosovo where people continue to be divided by ethnic groups.
This may well be the case in Katy, Texas today but the assimilation process has broken down in California due to the sheer number of recent immigrants.
For those children of immigrants raised and educated in California during the 1950's through the 1970's your obsevations are substantially true. The spirally numbers of immigrants in the last twenty years in California has interfered with this process. Immigrant children born in California during the 1980's today remain more fluent in their parent's tongue than in English.
They are certainly bilingual but Spanish is the predominant language in the workplace because they deal on a daily basis with the more recent tidal wave of immigrants pouring into California since the 1990s.
Get out of denial. No prior mass immigration in U.S. history involved a contiguous nation with a porous border sending hordes of aliens to the U.S. on an apparently-endless basis! Nor were any large contiguous enclaves speaking primarily another language involved. Nor was staying non-English-fluent an option; there just wasn't a Univision or government services here in your ancestor's homeland's language to allow them to not assimilate when they came.
"Chinatowns" weren't contiguous to China, nor "Little Italys" to Italy! Also very important, prior mass immigrations just didn't last long - so those who came could be assimilated; now, even if the individual Mexican arriving in Lost Angeles might assimilate, the community he's part of just won't - as hordes of additional Mexicans arrive daily with no foreseeable end.
Mass immigration in the 1920s meant large numbers of people - but from many different homelands; it thus lacked any potential to form city-wide Kosovos, much less broad regional ones.
IMMIGRATION resource library: public-health facts, court decisions, local INS numbers!
That's fine for that generation, but unless things change, there will be another 30 million illegals who do not speak English.
The borders must be closed, illegals deported, and legal Immigrants encouraged to assimilate.