English Only Policy: A Movement to Limit the Use of Spanish in the U.S.

The United States is composed of diverse cultures due to the increasing number of immigrants every year. This means that the languages used in the country vary also according to the number of people living in the city. One example of this is Tucson, Arizona where more than 40 percent living in the city are Hispanics and Latinos, therefore you can hear many people speaking Spanish.

At present, the country has more than 41 million Spanish-speaking people and these numbers are increasing every year. But behind this, some small groups advocate to restrict the use of Spanish and use English as a means of communication.

BBC News published in one of their reports that during the presidential candidacy of Trump in 2016, he kept saying to speak English because America is a country where people speak in English. This was part of his strategy against the Republican candidate who used to introduce himself in Spanish.

However, the demand to speak in English has no legal basis at all. America has no official language. There were videos in the social media that criticize people for speaking Spanish. The message of the video was very clear that if you are in America, you have to speak in English.

But have you ever wonder why the attack is only for the Spanish speakers and it does not include people who speak in Dutch, Italian, French, or any other "foreign" language? This might be because most Spanish speakers are immigrants.

A researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said that "These reactions against people who speak Spanish are probably not new, but Donald Trump unleashed feelings that were not expressed publicly so often before."

The SPLC monitors hate groups which are defined by the group of researchers as groups that attack or malign a group of people because of their race and ethnic affiliation. SPLH has qualified some groups and organizations that are anti-immigrants such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Washington DC-Based Center for Immigration Studies. Part of the list also is ProEnglish that advocates English as the official language of the country. Moreover, these groups were created by white American far-right nationalist John Tanton who just died in July this year.

ProEnglish is one of the main organizations that is pushing English as the official language of the country and the use of English as a means of communication. They are known for the English Movement or English First.

Moreover, ProEnglish said in one of their interviews that "In a pluralistic nation such as ours, the function of government should be to foster and support the similarities that unite us, rather than institutionalize the differences that divide us."

The organization also calls to end the use of bilinguistics in public schools in America and use English instead as the main language. ProEnglish has been considered as an anti-immigrant despite what they posted on their website that every language must be respected because of their move to require Spanish speakers to speak in English.

SPLC said that "They are careful to be called ProEnglish and not 'anti-Spanish'. But it is clear that their ideology is supremacist, referring to English as a symbol of U.S. cultural heritage when this country has never been a project only in English."