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Carly Fiorina Says English Should Be The Official Language. Here’s The Problem With That.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Though she “admires” multilingual people, English should be the official language of the United States, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Thursday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“I admire the fact that Jeb Bush is multilingual,” Fiorina said. “I admire the fact that so many people are multilingual. And I also think that English is the official language of the United States.”

Fiorina went on to comment that the U.S.-Mexico border needed to be secured and called for fixing the legal immigration system. She also stated that while she doesn’t believe that undocumented immigrants should receive a pathway to citizenship, she would allow some undocumented immigrants to “earn a pathway to legal status under certain circumstances so that they can work.”

Fiorina’s comments are on trend with what fellow candidate Donald Trump said just a day before. Trump criticized former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) for not exclusively speaking English on the campaign trail, reverting to Spanish sometimes.

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ProEnglish, an advocacy group that has pushed to implement English-only laws for decades, “applauds” the effort of the Republican presidential candidates calling to make English the official language. The group has been a leader in the English-only movement, which was founded by John Tanton, who has a history of making racially charged remarks with regards to minorities. He once questioned whether Latin American migrants would bring a tradition of bribes and lack of involvement in public affairs in the country and whether less intelligent individuals “logically should have less” children.

“It would encourage greater assimilation and it would help taxpayers cut down on unnecessary translation costs,” Robert Vandervoort, executive director of the organization, told ThinkProgress. He said that there are over 300 languages spoken in the country, so making English the official language “would reduce having to translate every document.”

America does not have an official language and the reality of the nation’s increasingly multicultural population makes the English-only movement particularly problematic for millions of limited English proficient residents.

According to the Instituto Cervantes, the U.S. has 41 million native Spanish speakers and 11.6 million who are bilingual (mostly comprised of children of Spanish-speaking individuals), making it the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico. The same study estimated that the U.S. will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, almost one-third of the country’s population. And the Index of Human Development “ranks Spanish as the second most important language on earth, behind English but ahead of Mandarin,” the Guardian reported.

What’s more, a U.S. Census Bureau survey indicated that as of 2009, about 20 percent of the country is bilingual, a number that has risen since the 1990s. Los Angeles, California is one place where at least half of the millennial population are bilingual speakers. The foreign-born millennial population has come down, meaning that more U.S. residents are learning a second-language at home or in school, with immigrant parents likely passing along their native languages to their American-born children, VOA News reported earlier this year.

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“America’s always been a melting pot with people who speak many other languages, but in order for America to work, we need a common bond of unity that brings people together to communicate in one common language,” Vandervoort said. “There’s always been an expectation that when people come to this country, they learn to assimilate and learn our language and our customs and I think the rise of, this push towards, multiculturalism is actually what’s divisive and taking away from our unity.”

The immigrant advocacy group League of United Latin American Citizens disagrees, stating instead that English-only legislation is in part a “bad idea” because “it sends the message that the culture of language minorities is inferior and illegal. With a dramatic increase in hate crimes and right wing terrorist attacks in the United States, the last thing we need is a frivolous bill to fuel the fires of racism,” according to a webpage discussing its stance on the topic. The group also believes that English-only legislation would negatively impact services provided to Americans with limited English proficiency and could potentially disenfranchise millions of Americans using bilingual ballots.

Calling for English-only proposals are a sentiment shared by many Republicans and immigrant-restrictionists. As of the end of August, Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) English Language Unity Act bill has 57 cosponsors to support legislation that would make English the official language of the federal government. King has long been an outspoken critic of undocumented immigrants.

In 2013, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), another 2016 presidential candidate, included an English-only amendment to the Senate approved, but now-abandoned, comprehensive immigration reform bill. In reality, the provision would have overwhelmed an already underfunded English as a Second Language (ESL) system that would not have been able to support the influx of millions of limited-English proficient immigrants.

Newt Gingrich once denounced bilingualism as a “menace to American civilization” and even alluded to languages other than English as the “language of living in a ghetto.” Several states have already passed laws establishing English as the official language on the state level.

Still, English-only legislation may slowly be on its way out in some parts of the country. The Frederick County Council in Maryland recently voted 4–3 to repeal its English-only ordinance passed in 2012, a law that required the government to operate in English and may have likely discriminated against those with limited proficiency in English.