Official Language Debate

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Throughout its short history, the United States of America has been called home by many different kinds of people, all with diverse backgrounds and experiences. It is considered to be a nation of immigrants, reflecting the fact that most people’s ancestors came here from somewhere else, led by the promise of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity. These immigrants brought their customs, culture, and language to the melting pot that was America and contributed to their new country’s rich diversity. Much like the Constitution does not establish an official religion in order to protect the freedom of American citizens, it also never established an official language. With more and more people immigrating, the United States now has 28 dominant languages—those spoken by 100,000 or more people (King, 1), and debates have emerged as to whether or not English should be established as the official language. Proponents of English as the official language believe that English proficiency will help immigrants by enabling them to get better jobs and education, will unite Americans of all cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and will decrease government money being spent on translation and printing costs for their documents, money which could be spent in other ways. Opponents believe that a national language unfairly persecutes people who are not proficient in English, establishes false stereotypes about immigrants, and is undemocratic. There are many proponents of establishing English as the official language of the United States, but I will choose to focus on one of the most prominent. U.S. English is a citizens’ action group dedicated to informing the public about the benefits of official-English laws. U.S. English believes that “avoiding the declaration of an official language creates conceptual, pragmatic, and logistical problems” (Smith, 2). In an effort to persuade citizens
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