english only laws?

Question

Why are there so many English only laws being legislated?

Answer 1

Most people will agree that numerous languages in a single country only serve to divide the country.

Answer 2

The other poster said most people agree that it will only serve to divide a country. I don't know who the "most people" are, but most countries have more than one national language. Canada has trouble with the two lanugages spoken there, but those problems are more political than anything else. Across Europe, most countries are multi-lingual and they aren't having any big problems.

The hispanic population in the US is about 30% now, and most of those people speak Spanish (in addition to English, usually). This doesn't include the huge illegal population who all speak Spanish (some of them speak English, too). Nor does it include the non-Hispanic population that can also speak Spanish (people who learned it because they wanted to). By some estimates, half the country ALREADY speaks Spanish. Most of those people speak English too, so a huge chunk of the country is bilingual. I'd say that regardless of whether or not you agree with bilingualism or immigration trends, if you care about your kids' chances getting good jobs in the future, you'll make sure they learn English AND Spanish.

This is irrelevant, but an interesting little fact: Mexico has more languages than any country in the world aside from India.