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Last Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order making English the official language of the United States. This ends 249 years of the country not having any official language, a designation the U.S. shared with only Mexico and the Pacific archipelago nation of Palau.
The order also rescinded a 2000 Bill Clinton mandate requiring aid-dispensing agencies to provide language assistance to non-English speakers, while leaving the door open to agencies to do so if they choose. While the Left will undoubtedly cry “nativism” and “xenophobia” over the coming days, the order’s wording, historical perspective, and common sense show this is a necessary step to strengthen our “melting pot” by uniting as “a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.”
It's about time.
Be informed, not misled.
First, it’s necessary to understand why America never had an official language and why President Trump needed to "make English our official language" in the first place.
From its colonial beginnings, America had an Anglophone supermajority but a smattering of other languages. At the nation’s founding in 1776, New York, Pennsylvania, and sections of the Appalachian backcountry harbored large minorities of German and Dutch speakers, and establishing a state language went no more with the libertarian character of the Revolutionary generation than establishing a state religion, which the First Amendment expressly forbade. But America’s political economy assured voluntary assimilation anyway, and America’s great Founding documents and debates, from the Federalist Papers to Common Sense, were in English, a shared language that brought the Union together and made its ideals legible to citizens in South Carolina just as for Massachusetts.
The Federalist explains,
"For the next century and a half, the absence of a welfare state incentivized almost all Americans to learn English and preserve our linguistic commonality even if they remained bilingual or spoke another language at home. In a world with no public safety net, learning the language that 90 percent of your potential employers, customers, employees, and clients speak is a no-brainer. Thus, by 1800, almost all Germans living in Philadelphia (one-third of the city) spoke English. A century later, most Germans who had settled in the Midwest were at least bilingual, and some knew only English. By the mid-20th century, most of the Poles, Italians, Hungarians, and other Eastern Europeans who arrived in the great immigration wave of 1880-1914 spoke English, and the number of Italian-Americans that speak the old country’s language today is 550,000, well under 5 percent of all Americans of Italian heritage. That is no mystery — those groups arrived in the U.S. overwhelmingly before the New Deal and Great Society welfare programs existed and thus assimilated faster than more recent waves of immigrants."
America is becoming a nation of many languages.
According to the Census Bureau, the number of people in the U.S. who spoke a language other than English at home nearly tripled from 23.1 million (about 1 in 10) to 67.8 million (about 1 in 5) over three recent decades.
According to the nonprofit service Translators Without Borders, the United States has between 350 and 430 languages spoken, making it one of the most linguistically diverse countries on Earth.
Its figure is consistent with the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of “more than 350 languages.”
Americans trace their roots to every part of the globe, and many can speak the language native to the places from which they or their ancestors came.
In other words, while the largest share of the U.S. population (78.4%) speaks only English at home, a growing share (21.6%) of U.S. households speak languages other than English.
Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S., so it’s no surprise that Spanish is the most common non-English language spoken in U.S. households. About 42 million people speak Spanish at home (they represent roughly two-thirds of those speaking a language other than English).
Takeaway
The problem with the welfare state.
For the next century and a half, the absence of a welfare state incentivized almost all Americans to learn English and preserve our linguistic commonality even if they remained bilingual or spoke another language at home. In a world with no public safety net, learning the language that 90 percent of your potential employers, customers, employees, and clients speak is a no-brainer. Thus, by 1800, almost all Germans living in Philadelphia (one-third of the city) spoke English. A century later, most Germans who had settled in the Midwest were at least bilingual, and some knew only English. By the mid-20th century, most of the Poles, Italians, Hungarians, and other Eastern Europeans who arrived in the great immigration wave of 1880-1914 spoke English, and the number of Italian-Americans that speak the old country’s language today is 550,000, well under 5 percent of all Americans of Italian heritage. That is no mystery — those groups arrived in the U.S. overwhelmingly before the New Deal and Great Society welfare programs existed and thus assimilated faster than more recent waves of immigrants.
Today, while many immigrants strive for the American dream and learn English on their way to assimilation, the existence of a vast state and federal welfare system has slowed the process for some and halted it for others. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 8.3 percent of Americans do not speak English “very well”
Welfare often eliminates motivation. We are seeing that happen in our country.
Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values and create a more cohesive and efficient society.
Trump recognizes this issue and is, in my opinion, taking the proper action to eliminate the problem and help the people who need it most.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.
