English Only Nation
Rich Robert
English 119
Instructor Taha Alhumdi
September 15, 2013

From Many One The United States is a diverse country populated by generations of families from across the globe. A common reason for the first members of these families to start a new life in the United States is that they had a dream of a better life for their families. Leaving everything they knew behind, these families were willing to take a risk and change the lifestyle they were accustom to in order to gain as much comfort and success as they wanted in a new free country. They had little knowledge of what changes had to be made, for example the jobs they would work, the relationships that would be made and how they would be able to communicate with the people in the United States. Our national motto is E pluribus Unum - out of many, one. Immigrants of many nationalities built our nation, but the "melting pot" melded us into one people. In order for the United States to benefit and break the barriers of communication between the many cultures, the country needs to strive to be an “English-only” nation. Multilingualism is costly to the United States. In the course of one year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to provide assistance to people in need of translation services. In 2002, 36,625 people were served by language interpreters in Virginia criminal cases, at a cost of 2.7 million to taxpayers. The total cost of providing multilingual services for the Immigration and Naturalization Service would be between $114 million and $150 million annually. More than $100 million have been spent in the last 30 years to assess the value of bilingual education. Two startling conclusions made in the study include: (1) There is no evidence that a program of native language instruction has greater benefits than any other type of education program, and (2) Teaching children to read in English first, instead of in their native tongue, has no negative consequences. The enormous amount of research is on top of the $665 million a year the federal government spends on bilingual programs. If the United States used the money they spent on translation, and funded programs to help people speak English, communication between the cultures would be strengthened in addition to a long-term benefit of financial savings. The majority of people in the United States speak English, according to the US Census Brief, 82% of all