We’re Officially Monolingual, Says White House Edict
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 13 Mar, 2025

Burrowing our national psyche deeper into monoculturalism will disadvantage Americans in more ways than can be imagined.

On March 1, President Trump signed an Executive Order making English the official language of the United States. 

I kind of get the appeal of having an official language. After all, the NFL has an official beer (Bud Light), The Yankees have an official pizza (Papa John’s), and you may not have realized this, but even college football’s “Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl” has an official sponsor (Chick-Fil-A).

Or take dating, for example. Most of us have made it to the point in a relationship where we’re ready to give it an official title. Sometimes that’s after a few dates, a few months, or in this case, 244 years after America’s founding.

But what does it actually mean to make English our official language? The text of the executive order itself would have you believe that this is meant to explicitly help foreigners:

“Speaking English not only opens doors economically, but it helps newcomers engage in their communities, participate in national traditions, and give back to our society.”

In actuality, this could be devastating for the tens of millions of non-English speakers from various countries. While Spanish accounts for 62% of non-English speaking homes in the US, we’re likely to see wide-scale harm inflicted on the Asian-American communities as well. Following English and Spanish, the three most commonly spoken languages in the US are Chinese, Tagalong, and Vietnamese.

In some ways, the effects of the order will be symbolic. It’s a legal justification for making fun of someone’s accent or mispronunciation of a word; a reminder that “America First” only includes a certain type of American. 

There will also be more tangible effects. Per the White house:

The Order rescinds a Clinton-era mandate that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide extensive language assistance to non-English speakers.

The consequences of revoking this mandate are not just theoretical.

Remember the fatal BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast in 2010? In the midst of containment, removal, wildlife rescue and countless other concerns, the Obama administration was, by law,  sending numerous Vietnamese translators to the Gulf.

Vietnamese account for about 80% of workers in the Gulf Coast fishing industry. In the aftermath of the BP spill, many of them desperately relied on translators for helping with insurance paperwork, finding temporary employment, and by some accounts, explaining the unfair settlement deal that BP was coaxing them to sign in an attempt to limit their own liability. 

These are very real protections that many non-English speakers will no longer have when, God forbid, the next tragedy strikes.

While it can sometimes be anyone’s guess how the new policy will actually play out, there’s actual evidence to look at in this case: a number of states have already enacted their own English only laws over the years. 

Massachusetts was one state with an English only law on the books. And they repealed it 15 years later in 2017, due largely to what they saw as negative effects on students who were struggling to learn English. As State Legislator Jeffrey Sanchez described, “The dropout rate for this group is three times what it would be for regular students." According to an article written for the American Psychological Association, English-only laws can have negative effects on both social and educational development, and even affect the foreign language-speaker’s ability to access healthcare. California, like Massachusetts, also repealed the English-only law that they had on the books. 

Now let’s suppose that you honestly and truly don’t care about the well-being of immigrants; that your sole motivation for supporting English-only policy is to help American-born English speakers succeed. Boy, do I have bad news for you: The move towards a society with only one language is likely to hurt the country as a whole. When fewer Americans are exposed to, say, Spanish or Mandarin, they’ll miss out on good paying jobs that reward bilingualism. On a more macro level, a country that’s unable to effectively do business with other nations would struggle to remain a world leader.

In contrast to the US, let’s look at Hong Kong, a bilingual society which mandates that children learn both English and Mandarin, two languages that combine to account for at least one-third of the world’s communication. It’s hard to see how they aren’t being set up for a higher degree of success than children in the US. Singapore goes even further with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. They’re known for having one of the strongest economies in the world

On top of all of the evidence that English-only policy could be damaging, I also just find it weird that we’re so eager to officially adopt the language of the very people we staged the Revolutionary War against. I guess wanting to be just like them is one way to exercise our hard-earned freedom.

The good news is, if California and Massachusetts could see the light after the policy failed them, there’s hope that we can eventually correct the course if needed. I just wouldn’t expect that to be during this administration, whose motives frequently remain unclear. Sure, Trump claims that this will be good for foreigners and Americans alike. But sometimes you need a translator to figure out what he’s really saying.