English-only movement
[1] Support for the English-only movement began in 1907, under US President Theodore Roosevelt, and continues today as studies prove high percentage in approval ratings.
[4] After the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), the United States acquired about 75,000 Spanish speakers in addition to several indigenous language-speaking populations.
[12] In 2018, a Rasmussen poll found that 81% of American adults thought that English should be the official language of the United States, while 12% did not.
In 1986, Tanton wrote a memo containing remarks about Hispanics claimed by critics to be derogatory, which appeared in the Arizona Republic newspaper, leading to the resignations from U.S. English board member Walter Cronkite and executive director Linda Chavez; Tanton would also sever his ties to the organization as a result.
That same year, 1986, Larry Pratt founded English First, while Lou Zaeske, an engineer from Bryan, Texas, established the American Ethnic Coalition.
In 1994, John Tanton and other former U.S. English associates founded ProEnglish specifically to defend Arizona's English-only law.
[20][21] The amended bill recognized English as a "common and unifying language" and gave contradictory instructions to government agencies on their obligations for non-English publications.
"[27] On February 6, 2019, the 116th Congress introduced a bill in House establishing English as the official language of the United States.
In 2023 then U.S. senator and current U.S. Vice President JD Vance introduced a bill that would have established English as the official language of the United States.
[29] The modern English-only movement has met with rejection from the Linguistic Society of America, which passed a resolution in 1986–87 opposing "'English only' measures on the grounds that they are based on misconceptions about the role of a common language in establishing political unity, and that they are inconsistent with basic American traditions of linguistic tolerance.
"[31] Rachele Lawton, applying critical discourse analysis, argues that English-only's rhetoric suggests that the "real motivation is discrimination and disenfranchisement.
[33] On August 11, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13166, "Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency."
[34] While the judicial system has noted that state English-only laws are largely symbolic and non-prohibitive, supervisors and managers often interpret them to mean English is the mandatory language of daily life.
[35] In 2004 in Scottsdale, a teacher claimed to be enforcing English immersion policies when she allegedly slapped students for speaking Spanish in class.
