Bilingualism In America

Bilingualism should exist in the United States
The United States should become more open and globalized upon its international status. Because it is a unique country that has various languages and cultures, there are some people who believe on the notion of “one nation one language”, while some believe bilingualism is better for the United States. In the article “A Nation divided by one language”, the author James Crawford provides many research statistics that prove bilinguals are generally smarter than monolinguals. He believes that the media misleads people into believing bilingual education is bad. Crawford states that if one only receives information from the media, one would have the same thoughts that most Americans have (Crawford
Unity is the huge part of organizing a nation. “As an immigrant to this nation, I am keenly aware of the things that bind us as Americans and unite us as a single people. Foremost among these unifying forces is the common language we share” (Hayakawa 575). Hayakawa says that as an immigrant, he feels more like an American if he speaks English, English makes people come from all over the world united. Vary languages makes vary groups of people, this is what Hayakawa stated. However, Unlike Hayakawa, most of the immigrants are uneducated, or have low education. They do not have any basic knowledge about English. These immigrants will gather together in their certain group. Without any help or introduction in their native language, they will keep stay in a small community, and not willing and able to communicate with people outside of their community. This is why bilingualism should exist, the existence of bilingualism is not segregation, yet an assistance to make the U.S. more united. “Of the 111.6 million households in the United States, each with an average 2.61 family members, 4.8 percent were ‘linguistically isolated,’ meaning everyone aged 14 or older in the households had difficulty speaking English, a report issued by the Census Bureau was quoted by AFP as saying” (Uusjio 2007). According the statistics, five percent of the legal population is being isolated, and of course countless undocumented immigrants do not speak English at all. Are these people considered Americans? If not, then it will be a linguistic discrimination. If yes, what should we do? We should provide these people proper bilingual instruction and bilingual education to help them get through the language barrier in order to make the nation united. We should provide promote bilingualism to help these people fit into the society. This is what we should do to maintain unity. English-only policy can