“Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.”

This is the exact fear of people who worry about immigration. That instead of “them” learning English, “we” are all going to be forced to learn Spanish. This will set many Americans off immediately and they may not hear anything else. Now, as he keeps talking it becomes clear that Obama's just saying that having many language skills is a great asset to an individual and to the nation. That's entirely reasonable and true.

(It's also entirely reasonable to learn a skill so that one can talk immediately to immigrants and travelers whose native language isn't English. Millions of Japanese tourists for instance come to Hawaii every year, where I live, and my job prospects would be much better if I could speak Japanese. Similar things are true in other parts of the nation with Spanish or Hmong or Arabic. But, for better or for worse, there are many millions of Americans who view language as a sort of battle in which speaking to others is not a great skill but an unfortunate and unjustified accommodation or even defeat.)

Obama gets it.

For much younger children, though, familiarity with pronunciation, phrases, and general structure are the very best possible baseline for later study and ability to absorb.

Polimom I've known several people (and there are studies that hint at the possibility) that claim multilingualism facilitates general language development. Studying languages with different sounds and grammar structure seems to make it easier to understand the underlying principles of your native language as well.