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Sergio Magallanes
ENG 2010
Trevor Smith
04/24/2016

The Effects of English Only Legislation

America has always been a place of immigrants. People keep coming to America for
different reasons. The fact is that even with the public backlash from certain parts of the
American society, America will keep attracting immigrants to come in search of the American
dream. This is true at least for the foreseeable future. Some people say that America is melting
pot, others want it to be salad bowl. The truth is that it can be one or the other. This is depending
where you are in the country geographically and also who is being asked. However, what holds
America together is its ideals, principles, and values. If this is the case, the way this is
communicated is really important because including everyone in America makes for a richer
better America than just having its protected class keep ruling. It is only logical that with the
demographic changes happening in the country now one of the issues arising is English Only
laws. The proponents of English Only laws feel that since we are in America everyone should
speak English, or as is sometimes stated Speak American, This hostility affects everyone in the
American society because it breads prejudice and intolerance towards those that do not speak
English. According to Rebecca L. Weber which states that While encouraging immigrants into

American culture is important, laws punishing students

for not speaking English in school send a message that
foreigners are not welcome in the United States and fail
to help ESL students succeed in the classroom. Weber is

telling us that this view

about English Only is
detrimental for foreign
students because it
disconnects them and
discourages them from
learning. The time to act is now, it is necessary to stop this English Only Movement because the
benefits of multilingualism far out weight the ones of monolinguals. It is necessary to have a
common national language, which in this case is already English, to be able to communicate.
However, making it wrong to speak a different language is completely wrong, discriminatory,
and robs people of enriching their intellect and lives.
Some of the effects of enacting English Only legislation are the following: people is put
off because of the negative view on speaking other language but English, language barriers could
be use against minorities or people that do not speak English, especially Latinos that are deny a
job or promotion at work. People that are targeted by this laws often become isolated and
alienated. Kids in school have a harder time leaning. There is loss of culture and heritage that
could instead enrich American culture. It causes cultural disconnect between parents that do not

speak English and their English speaking kids, and contrary to what the proponents of English
Only laws argue about, in the case for losing American essence. They adopt this values and
virtues even though often times they are not fluent in English.

[GRAB YOUR READERS ATTENTION WITH A GREAT QUOTE FROM

THE DOCUMENT OR USE THIS SPACE TO EMPHASIZE A KEY POINT.
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IT.]
There is no official language in America, however around the country more than 30 states
have pass legislation for English only laws affecting minorities disproportionally. This is even
more pronounced in the Hispanic community. This is due largely to the fact that most immigrants
to the United
States for the last
couples of

The people that do not speak English in America will

become invisible. Juan F. Perea

decades are of
Hispanic origin. English only laws are a way of disenfranchising and marginalizing people in an
effort to suppress their emergence. The proponents of English Only say that by enacting these
laws, they will help reduce the cost of printing paper and official forms thus saving money to the
tax payer. For example, the website Englishfirst.org has as one of its goals for the 112 congress
to push for legislation making the English the official language in America and pass legislation
for business and government so there is no obligation in using a different language from English,
another of its goals is to lower healthcare cost by using English Only and removing the translator
option, no more press 1 for English. This is very clearly a strategy to leave people out, to
suppress them, and make them easily exploitable. For example, think about a typical New

Mexican, in this case an elderly Hispanic American that dates its linage to the original Spaniard
settlers, and speaks better Spanish than English. By denying his healthcare in the language of his
choice, he runs more health risks because information that otherwise would be easily available is
now missing and only available in English. The English Only people cannot tell him to go back
to Mexico, he is as American as any of the people that are proposing English Only.

The English First Movement people often times fail

to grasp the complexity of proposing English only in
America. They fail to understand that many Americans do
not speak English fluently, it is not just immigrants that
have this issue. As Juan F. Perea put it in his article Los
Olvidados: On the Making of Invisible People. The people that do not speak English in America
will become invisible. On top of that laws punishing people for not speaking English send a
message that immigrants are not welcome here, and since this is basically anti-immigrant
rhetoric, it sends the message to the world that America is not a welcoming place. Another
negative of the English Only laws is that it harms business that rely on immigrant labor. Business
in agriculture, hospitality industry, construction suffer financially when there are shortages of
immigrant labor. To illustrate this point, if strawberry growers face a labor shortage because they
need to conduct their business all in English officially, then they will not be able to pick up the
produce and lose financially, which will cause people to loss their job in related industries as
well, such as truck drivers, and people that works in logistics. On the other end, the customer
will also suffer financially as well because the strawberries will be more expensive due to the
product shortages. This is not only affecting and suppressing immigrants that do not speak
English but also Americans because of this discriminatory laws.
Another great example is in academic achievement. It has been proven that in the
American educational system K-12 students from low income families lack educational
achievement compared to its white rich counterparts, and it is also widely accepted that most
immigrants are in the bottom of the income ladder. Therefore, a lot of the students that drop out

school are minority or immigrants. To drive

this point across, according to Rebecca L
weber in her article English-Only
Requirements Are Anti-Immigration states
that in American Schools K-12 schools 8% of
students are foreign born students, however 1
in 4 high school drop outs are foreign born. This is directly correlated to making English Only
laws that require schools to teach and speak only English leaving student behind. Another
rhetoric regarding making English the official language is that people become isolated and
alienated, and often times even as immigrants speak English, proponents of English Only do not
tolerate them because they speak with an accent.
Since the English Only Movement is based on of emotion rather than facts and
objectivity, often times telling them that being multilingual is better not only because of the
cognitive advantages in learning in schools brings, but also for the business opportunities that
been able to speak to people of another culture affords, this then even as is a logical argument do
not make sense to them. For example, Daniel A Martinez Reyes on his paper on The Effects of
Multilingualism on Executive Functioning and Memory in a Sample of College Educated Older
Adults states that bilingual people have better cognitive skills, have increased performance in
processing, and greater ability to switch task on language and non-language tasks when
compared to monolinguals. With this in mind, then American kids should be learning more than
one language in school to give then an advantage compare to their peers around the globe. This is
critical now because of the way in which the American K-12 educational system hans been
falling behind. Furthermore, American economic advantage is at stake here, and if the

proponents of English Only are able to implement their agenda nationally America runs the risk
of losing its place as the number one power in the world economically.
In conclusion, the effects of laws for making English the official language in America are far and
reaching. Not only because it diminishes people, isolate and alienates complete groups of people,
it also brings division, and mistrust. On top of that, it brings loss of heritage and culture that
could enrich American society. On the business side, businesses lose money because whole
segments of the population that
otherwise could be customers
are lost because
communication has to be only
in English. By implementing
English Only laws it is clear
that is one sided and not all
people in America society
benefits. In this instance, the position to English Only legislation on this essay is that they should
not be enacted or passed across the country.

Reflective Paragraph
I chose the position argument paragraph because I thought it would be easy to make
given that I had already done an argument essay earlier on the semester, for the portfolio
assignment. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that even as I am somewhat familiar with the
subject of the essay, what got my attention the most was the process of making the essay, not
what I was leading about the topic of the essay but the process of how to put together the essay.
What I did first was brainstorm possible topics and subtopics I could use for my points to argue
for the essay. No surprise there, however once I began to do the rest of the exercise suggested in
the book, I realized that even though it is time consuming, they would be very useful for putting
together the essay. For example, Freewriting served as basis for my first draft. Using the
questions section to define what I was going to be writing about was also useful because it
helped me clarify my mind as to what to write, and also get rid of competing thoughts that were
making the subject too broad. Then during the organization phase, it was a lot easier to put the
essay together because it was already defined by the questions exercise. The outline was critical
because I used this outlining process to come up more refined points, and it was also super
useful for capturing my points while I was doing my research and reading the articles to back up
my essay. After that it was just a question of using rhetorical methods to develop each point for
my essay. By the way, it was more difficult than I thought it would be. I already knew what I
wanted to say, now I needed the How to put it in writing. So for the revised draft I did that, I

also used the outline on page 208 from the book The Harbrace Guide to Writing by Cheryl
Glenn for how to shape my position paragraph. Which it took a lot of effort and it was time
consuming. Just the same as when I was preparing to write the position argument because on top
of using the rhetorical methods to develop the position argument, I also had to adapt what I wrote
to meet the guide lines of page 209. In summary, my take away from the project is that by going
through the guidelines outlined in the book, it made making the essay easier because everything
was already prewritten. Furthermore, I cannot skip the process. I learned that the process of
preparing the essay such as the prewriting guidelines are essential to make a well thought-out
essay.

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Cited Works

Blackwell, Kenneth. English should be Americas Official Language. Immigration. Ed. D

David M. Huagen, Susan Musser, and Kacy Lovelace. Detroit: GreenHeaven Press,
2009. Opposing Viewpoints, Rpt. From Make English Official. New York. New York
sun 6. 2007. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 April. 2016.
Weber, Rebecca L.English-Only Requirements are Anti-Immigration. Bilingual Education. Ed.
Janel D. Ginn. Detroit: GreenHeaven Press, 2008. At issue. Rpt. From Something to
Talk About: English-only Laws are Restricting More Than Just Whats Being said.
NEA Today 25 (Nov 2006) 25 Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web 24 April 2016
Donelly, Chris. The United States Should Not Have a National Language. Should The United
States Be Multilingual? Ed. Amy Francis. Detroit: Green heaven Press, 2011. At issue.
Rpt. From U. Connecticut: National language is Un-American. The Daily Campus (21
Feb.). Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web 24 April. 2016.
Garret, Rachel Signal. Multilingualism, Mathematics Achievement, And Industrial Language
Policy. Order No. .3419635 The University of Chicago, 2010. Annn Arbor: Proquest.
Web. Pg 4. 24 April. 2016.
Martinez, Reyes Daniel A. (2013). The Effect of Multilingualism on Executive Functioning
And Memory in a Sample of College Educated Older Adults. Order 3604972 Fuller The
Logical Seminary, School of Psychology, 2013. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web Pp 5.24
April. 2016.
Cheryl, Glenn. The Harbrace Guide to Writing: Concise second Edition. Wadsworth Cengage
Learning Publishing 2012. Excerpt from: Los Olvidados: On the making of Invisible
People. By Jaun F Perea. Pp. 196. 24 April. 2016.