By Jonathan B. Wight

At a recent party, an acquaintance said she supported the President’s new immigration policy, provided that immigrants would be required to speak English. 

The signs at Walmart were galling to her—blatantly announcing products in Spanish!

The English-only movement has a long history going back centuries, but took on new life in the 1980s and afterwards. On the surface, it is a sensible policy to reduce transaction costs and increase the cultural coherence needed to maintain national unity.  Think of the cost to public administration and schooling to maintain more than one official language, not to mention the loss of economies of scale in advertising in the private sphere.

Wikipedia quotes Teddy Roosevelt, the great progressive, as saying “We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.”

There’s more than a few things troubling about the anti-Spanish movement, however.  The main two are that it seems unnecessary and counterproductive.

My great great grandparents on my mother’s side came over from Germany, likely in the 1870s.  They settled where lots of other Germans did, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They proceeded to build up a strong German community and my great grandparents contributed to this by starting a German-language printing company!  This effort survived until World War I when it became clear that using the enemy language would not do anymore.

My point is that America’s history is filled with other immigrant groups coming in and maintaining their own diverse cultures for many decades.  This happened to the Italians in “Little Italy” in North Boston and the Chinese in “Chinatown” in San Francisco. Even earlier, Spanish was spoken in Florida, French was spoken in Louisiana, and Spanish was spoken throughout Texas, California, and places in-between.  Navajo was used in the Navajo Nation, and of course this diversity became quite useful for making codes during World War II. There is no magic time in American history when English only was spoken.

Eventually there was language immersion by the other groups. Kids typically want to learn English to fit-in.  So, the bottom line is the English-first movement raises some important points, but ultimately is unnecessary as kids will tend to learn English. Forcing the parents to learn seems draconian.

I do support the teaching of “business English” in schools, so that every kid learns the language skills needed for success in college and business.  Many kids growing up in the ghetto speak dialects of English that can be as incomprehensible to outsiders as Dutch or Russian.  Requiring everyone to learn “business English” does not mean abandoning one’s cultural roots, accents, or so on.  It means learning a “second language” that at times can be vital for economic opportunity. 

But requiring English-only suffers from a second problem—it is counterproductive in a global age. Americans as young kids should be learning multiple languages. It creates a tone of jingoism and cultural arrogance to insist on English-only.