It's fine if they speak Spanish at home. They should also be able to speak English.

English-speaking American nationalism

labels...labels....labels....

I love multi-culturalism. I want others to be able to share their cultural traditions with others in the country.

But even further than this ... it is COMMON SENSE.

Consider, for instance, the Spanish-only speaker who gets along fairly well in his Spanish-speaking neighborhood. He goes to businesses where they speak Spanish.

He takes a vacation to see his brother in another state. On the way, he is in a car accident. He has injuries. The paramedics come to the scene to help him. He is utterly unable to give them any information they need like whether he is struggling for breath...where the pain is....etc. This continues at the hospital, where he is completely unable to communicate with the staff.

Would he not have been better off learning English?

Common sense, not "oppression."

And you can go ahead and try to dismantle the above argument but I used to work at a hospital. A nurse friend of mine got a patient that was having a visit from the specialist and the patient spoke ONLY French. Knowing that I speak French, she called and I came to the floor to translate for the doctor. With zero warning, I was told to tell this patient, who was a French-speaking African (so, the French isn't as straight-forward as I'd learned, but I tried) that he had HIV...the virus that causes AIDS... and he was very, very ill and could not leave the hospital. So there's this poor man who is getting hideous news from someone who is trying her best to find all of the right words so that the doctor can tell him the critical nature of his plight AND to translate him for the doctor so the doctor knows that he has abdomen pain and a brother in Chicago that needs to be contacted. I told this man, per the doctor, that he needed to stay at the hospital and that we would get him on a medication program to help his disease but that he should not have any unprotected sex with anyone or engage in anything else that can spread the disease.

Once we were finished, it was a truly terrible feeling.

He decided to leave the hospital against medical advice that night.

Now.... I do understand that he might have just come here and I certainly did not judge him for not speaking English ... but that was a situation where a hospital was unequipped to deal with someone who spoke no English at all and so, had to do it on the fly.

For these reasons and a number of others, I believe that English should be designated as our national language and that those who do not speak it, should be prompted to learn it.