English Should Be An Official Language Essay

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As immigration, legal and illegal, brings a variety of foreign language into the United States, a campaign to make English the nation’s official language is gaining attention. The debate of making English America’s official language has been present for some time, but since the recent presidential election, it’s a very popular topic. The immigrants hoping to adopt the American way of life, most likely will enter without knowing how to speak a word of English, so how do they expect to survive in this country, with English as the most popular language? They need to know how to communicate with fellow citizens to get the aid they’re searching for. According to the Article “One nation, one language?” written by Susan Headden, in 1994, 8.7 percent of Americans were born in other countries, the highest percentage since before World War II. So keeping in mind just about how many immigrants the United States roughly has, at least 85 percent speaks a native language instead of learning English. Since America has no ‘official language’, all migrants entering seem to mix in the midst of the billions of people from different backgrounds. If immigrants hoping to adopt the American way of life were required to speak English …show more content…

America has not realized how biased the country has become to their own lifestyle. Some often forget there is another world outside of the United States, and focus only on America’s problems. “The English-Only Movement” states that, “Viewed through the lens of the “deficit model,” language and ethnic minorities are not provided empirically sound educational opportunities, and therefore often fail in school. ,” (Teresa Pac). What English-only activists don’t realize is that when immigrants welcome English as their new language, they’re leaving their heritage and old way of life

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