English alone won’t cut it in a global economy



Like most American kids who endured years of Spanish class, I have little to show for it. Stock phrases like “¿Cómo estás?” or “Where is the library?” don’t open doors in the Spanish-speaking world — much less jobs.

In Europe, students routinely graduate their version of high school fluent in two or three languages. They don’t wait until college or rely on expensive immersion programs to acquire skills that fuel cognitive growth, global awareness, and career opportunities. For them, bilingualism is expected. For us, monolingualism has become an international stereotype — and a joke.

American schools pride themselves on preparing students for the global stage. But how can they claim that when graduates leave fluent only in English?

Schools treat language learning as an elective you can coast through until it’s too late to develop fluency. That’s a mistake. English may be the global lingua franca, but relying on it alone leaves Americans culturally and economically isolated. Geography didn’t bless us with neighbors who speak our language, and history didn’t guarantee multilingualism. We need to teach it.

Europeans vs. Americans

As of 2024, about 60% of Europeans can speak at least one foreign language. In the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, more than 90% of the population speaks a second language — usually English.

The United States looks very different. A 2019 Census Bureau survey found that only about 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home, and many of them have only basic conversational skills. True fluency is closer to 10%.

Most of those fluent speakers come from households with at least one foreign-born parent, especially from Latin America. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 57% of Americans who speak another language at home were born abroad, while 43% were U.S.-born children of immigrants.

The bottom line: Native-born Americans with English-only parents almost never achieve fluency. Our country relies on immigrant households to supply most of its bilingual citizens — a skill European nations expect from nearly everyone. That needs to change.

Bilingualism boosts brainpower

Bilingual, immersive language education is critical for American children’s development and for preparing them to compete globally. The National Institutes of Health has documented a clear “bilingual advantage”: Children who speak at least one additional language perform better cognitively than those who remain monolingual.

This advantage shows up in executive function — stronger problem-solving, memory, attention, and task-switching. Managing two languages sharpens working memory and mental flexibility. Research even suggests that bilingualism delays dementia and Alzheimer’s disease by several years.

The discipline required to master a language also strengthens overall learning, making it easier to acquire new skills later in life.

If America wants its children to be the “best and brightest,” then real fluency in a second language, taught from a young age, cannot remain optional. It should be the standard.

Economic and career advantages

America’s monolingual education system limits students’ future opportunities. Bilingual employees earn between 5% and 20% more than their monolingual peers, depending on the language and industry. Since 2020, demand for bilingual remote jobs has risen by 30%. High-demand languages include Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, German, and French — most of which American schools fail to teach.

Fluency also unlocks career paths closed to monolinguals: international business, trade, diplomacy, and countless others. For many Americans, monolingualism is the invisible wall blocking access to a lucrative job market they never knew existed.

Opportunity denied

The benefits of bilingualism are well established. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences notes that early exposure gives children the best chance at fluency. Yet fewer schools offer any language instruction at all.

RELATED: Austria’s struggle with mass migration holds a lesson for America

Photo by Askin Kiyagan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Those that do often provide a watered-down version — generic Spanish classes that drill greetings instead of teaching real communication. Options like German, Mandarin, Arabic, or French are usually limited to elite private or international schools.

That must change.

Break the stereotype

I was fortunate to study German in college through an immersion program and then sharpen my fluency while studying in Germany. That experience changed my life. Every high school student should have the same chance without needing a college degree or expensive international schools. Public schools can and must offer multiple language options, rigorous curricula, and early immersion.

American schools claim to prepare students for the global stage. But how can they when graduates leave fluent only in English? Lip service and rote memorization aren’t enough. Real language learning produces sharper thinkers, stronger communicators, and citizens able to engage the wider world.

If we want American education to keep its reputation for excellence, we need to stop treating foreign languages as electives. They are essential.

Trump Not Just Dominating Culture, He’s Also Shaping English Language

Big, if true

This Department Is Making English Its Sole Language

'We are one people'

No more 'press 1 for English': Trump is making dealing with the government a whole lot easier



President Trump signed an executive order in March designating English to be the official language of the United States.

In it, he declared that it is long past time to do so to create a cohesive society and push immigrants into adopting American culture and joining the American tradition.

Now, the Department of Justice is following through on the order and making sweeping changes to the federal government — and its services — to make the aggravating experience of dealing with government agencies a lot simpler.

'You shouldn't have to press 1 for English when calling a federal agency.'

As part of new guidance, the DOJ said it was in Americans' best interest for the federal government to have one official language: English.

It said the new policy would streamline federal processes, including forms, notices, websites, and advisories, to make them consistently clear and cost-effective. The guidance also said federal agencies will need to determine which of their programs, grants, and policies might better serve the public if they operated exclusively in English.

This effectively means that wherever possible, federal agencies will be providing services only in English.

The Justice Department is also looking to eliminate initiatives from a Clinton-era executive order which introduced limited English proficiency programs.

RELATED: 'Despicable': DHS unloads on left-leaning outlet for suggesting illegal alien pedophiles had a 'cultural misunderstanding'

The Trump administration said that LEPs often prioritized "multilingualism over English proficiency among new Americans" and "could impede assimilation and strain resources."

Therefore, the government is suspending operations of the LEP.gov website and will stop any letters, videos, or other training materials from being produced. These are likely to be replaced with new ones that reflect Trump's executive order.

Not only that, but all LEP guidance will be rescinded regarding the idea of "national origin discrimination affecting limited English proficient persons," which was referenced in Clinton's executive order.

"As President Trump has made clear, English is the official language of the United States," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release.

She added, "The Department of Justice will lead the effort to codify the president’s executive order and eliminate wasteful virtue-signaling policies across government agencies to promote assimilation over division."

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in the press release that the DOJ plans to "respect linguistic diversity" but that federal resources will "prioritize English proficiency to empower new Americans and strengthen civic unity."

RELATED: Democrats find loophole that could continue birthright citizenship for illegal aliens

— (@)

Representative Mary Miller (R-Ill.) boiled the new guidance down to a simple issue: "You shouldn't have to press 1 for English when calling a federal agency."

Miller wrote on X, "This is America, English should be the default. Learn it!"

The DOJ left room for the idea that some federal agencies could deem it "mission critical" to have some second-language services. If that were the case, they would need to include a "clear note that English is the official language and authoritative version of all federal information."

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No more similes? That’s like trying to eat soup with a fork!



Spring has sprung at last. My mind turns to the playful poetry of Ogden Nash, who in “Spring Song” penned “Twang the cheerful lute and zither! Spring is absolutely hither!” Yet reading on, my vernal spirits that so recently were soaring suddenly dropped like a pair of soaking-wet corduroys.

The drop came when I turned to “Very Like a Whale,” in which Nash struck a less mirthful tone: “One thing that literature would be greatly the better for / Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.” Fewer similes and metaphors? He might as well have drawn a thick, unyielding line — one as jarring as a needle scratching across a vinyl record.

With all due respect to the great Ogden Nash, I stand with the simile and an author’s right to use one, in springtime and beyond.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for more clarity in writing, but reading my favorite prankish poet’s proscription was as disorienting as how it feels when removing a T-shirt while standing directly under a spinning ceiling fan. Like an Adirondack chair, his censorious view is easier to get into than out of as time passes.

After all, blanket statements rarely stand the test of time, as inarguably as the adage “dress for the job you want” doesn’t help an accountant seeking to become a beekeeper. Like a band conductor who invariably describes his trumpeter as a man who never toots his own horn, Nash’s sullen take raises more questions than it answers.

In deference to the witty wordsmith, I’ll willingly part ways with metaphors, which have all the subtlety of tidal waves, to answer the clarion call for clarity. But how could a master of light verse have objected to the oh-so-breezy simile, a figure of speech capable of such delightful deployment?

Was Nash being ironic? Possibly. But if so, like a hipster’s ode on mighty Greek warrior Achilles rupturing his own Achilles tendon, or his sardonic screenplay about a corporate whistleblower reporting wrongdoing within a company that manufactures only whistles, the irony was simply too much.

Perhaps Nash first ruminated on his verse in the solitude of a walk, and quiet thought was interrupted. As a celebrity, he must have known he’d find no peace ambling about, as surely as someone named Sherwin Williams cannot expect it when entering a paint store on a busy Saturday morning.

Maybe Nash wasn’t serious at all. Maybe he was merely playing with language, the way one might spend an idle afternoon trying to teach a cat irregular verbs.

Then again, the verse might have been an admonition.

A simile in the wrong hands can be as dangerously misleading as a manager who describes a lazy employee — one who just happens to be shopping for four new radials — as a “tireless worker.” In an age of rising relativism, maybe the bard was warning of the perils of verbal sorcery.

Whatever his thinking, the problem for writers is plain: Swearing off similes is unbearable, like not correcting a dinner companion who’s asked a waiter for not a carafe but a giraffe of water. It’s as unsurprising as the ending to the classic novel “Death Comes for the Archbishop.”

With all due respect to the great Ogden Nash, I stand with the simile and an author’s right to use one, in springtime and beyond. I won’t die on this hill — having already parted ways with metaphors — but I’m as sure of my view as night follows day.

Trump Moves To ‘Create A More Cohesive And Efficient Society’ With New National Language Executive Order

'Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values and create a more cohesive and efficient society'

New immigrants struggle to assimilate — and we all pay for it



When it comes to addressing mass illegal immigration, most people agree that the first ones to deport are the violent criminals who pose a direct threat to Americans. Aside from a few open-borders radicals, few people will defend the presence of “bad hombres” in the country.

But what about the dumb hombres?

We need to acknowledge the challenge of integrating immigrants into our economic, political, and cultural system.

According to a recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies, most of the new immigrants who have come into the country in recent years are poorer and less educated. The report found that “41 percent of adult immigrants who had lived in the country for less than three years had at least a bachelor’s,” that “the share of new arrivals with no education beyond high school increased from 36 percent in 2018 to 46 percent in 2024,” and that “the median earnings of new adult immigrant men fell from 80 percent of the median for U.S.-born men in 2018 to only 52 percent in 2024.”

These numbers might come as a shock. After all, prominent faux conservatives like David French or tone-deaf political aspirants like Vivek Ramaswamy have assured us that incoming migrants were smarter and harder working than the mediocre mass of working-class Americans.

The report easily refutes this narrative. Already bad in past decades, the demographic situation predictably worsened during the Biden administration: “The surge in new arrivals with less education means that immigration has added enormously (3.5 million) to the nation’s low-income population in just the last three years.”

Ideally, American institutions would work their magic and turn these huddled masses into fully assimilated, thriving American citizens. Sure, many of them come with nothing except the clothes on their back, but they came for a better life and are willing to do what it takes to succeed in this country. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Unfortunately, this social alchemy becomes less plausible when the immigrants in question are far less educated and far more numerous than those in the past.

The American dream denied

Rather than live out the American dream, these people will be shut out from the economy and general culture and live out their days as members of a permanent underclass. They may learn a few scraps of English and do honest work, but many will be tempted to criminal activity and remain ensconced in their ethnic enclaves.

For those who think that fast-tracking citizenship and increasing social welfare entitlements can mitigate such an outcome, they can see for themselves how this is going in Western Europe, where every major city now has large suburbs of poor immigrants who refuse to assimilate. Why bother with formal education, working a job, or following the host country’s laws when they can count on receiving a generous check and free services from the government?

To avoid this fate, American leadership traditionally has leaned on public schooling to help new arrivals. True, some immigrants may be relegated to low-skilled work and living on public assistance, but their children and their higher-potential peers could make use of America’s local education systems to learn the skills and concepts to successfully adapt to the American way of life. We just need to train up and pay some more educators to teach ELLs — English-language learners — and deploy them in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

In all fairness, this approach has proven surprisingly effective. Although many will criticize American public education (I most of all), it is the best in the world at taking in immigrants from the third world and teaching them to operate in the first world. Even if American education fares poorly when compared to that of other countries, this changes when the numbers are broken down. Most immigrants perform better academically than the natives of their home countries.

Nevertheless, educating ELLs, especially from the undeveloped world, comes with tremendous costs that few pro-immigration advocates fully appreciate.

One-size-fits-all doesn’t

In my own state of Texas, every school and district have a sizable ELL department staffed with highly credentialed specialists working through a complex web of requirements of assessing, accommodating, and properly placing ELLs. In most districts, it is mandatory for teachers to be ELL certified, a process that involves several hours of professional learning and passing a four-hour exam.

As one might expect, this eats up a huge portion of state and local budgets. It’s also the very opposite of equitable. For every tiny ELL class with a team of teachers tending to the needs of a handful of students, there are several large AP classes with throngs of students pestering their one poor teacher about their grade. For every ELL regulation to be fulfilled, some other instructional objective goes unfulfilled.

Always remember, no matter how many resources schools commit to this effort, many students will inevitably complete the ELL program without learning to speak English or develop useful skills.

Americans have a few options for educating newly arrived immigrants. The first is to maintain the current system, which is unsustainable given the overwhelming number of arrivals. The second is to deport every illegal alien and their household — a deeply unpopular and likely impractical approach that could violate civil and human rights.

The third option is a middle ground that deports a sizable number of illegal immigrants by expanding criteria to include those with little or no education while reforming ELL policies. Instead of the current bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all approach that burdens many school districts, English-language education should be decentralized and subsidized on an individual basis for greater effectiveness.

At a minimum, we need to acknowledge the challenge of integrating immigrants into our economic, political, and cultural system. While education remains a worthwhile goal, it involves trade-offs that many Americans may not accept. To preserve civil harmony and sustain economic progress, we must adopt a realistic approach that balances national needs with a workable path forward for both current and future Americans.

Trump to make English the nation’s official language

'Promote unity, establish efficiency in the government'

Exclusive: Springfield school's shocking double standard — immigrant students can't fail



Immigrant students are given a much easier grading scale at a school in Springfield, Ohio, effectively preventing them from failing because they are still considered English "language learners," an email from the superintendent confirms.

A high school principal in the Northwestern Local Schools district previously sent an email to staff members at Northwestern Jr./Sr. High School, instructing them not to give so-called "English language learners" — often referred to as ELL students — a grade lower than a "C," Superintendent Jeff Patrick confirmed in an email obtained by Blaze News.

'It seems like a better solution might be possible.'

"The email [from the principal] did indeed state not to give our ELL students any grade under a 'C' based on the fact that for the first three years in an Ohio School system, ELL students are considered to be Language Learners," Patrick wrote in the email dated October 9.

Blaze News reached out to Patrick and asked a series of questions, including whether ELL students received passing grades even if they failed to turn in assignments and/or attend class as required. Patrick did not respond.

However, Patrick did indicate in the email viewed by Blaze News that the grading policy at the school may soon be changed.

"It seems like a better solution might be possible, so I have given our Director of Instruction and his team of Administrators the task of coming up with a better solution to this grading issue," he wrote.

The grading scale in the online version of the school handbook is not currently accessible, but prospective graduates of Northwestern Jr./Sr. High School must earn at least 21.5 credits and "demonstrate competency in math and English by passing the state’s algebra I and English II tests" or through other approved means.

As Patrick did not respond to any of Blaze News' questions, it is unclear whether students who are U.S. citizens and native speakers of English received failing grades while their ELL counterparts could not.

U.S. News and World Report claims that Northwestern Jr./Sr. High School has a graduation rate of greater than 95%, which suggests that at least a few students have failed to graduate. The outlet cited government data for its report but did not clarify when that data was collected.

The student handbook also warns that chronically truant students and their parents or guardians may face prosecution at a local municipal court. Truancy may even affect a student's ability to acquire a state driver's license, even though some of the city's 20,000 Haitian immigrants have been caught driving without a license.

Springfield, Ohio, has been in the national spotlight for more than a year after an unlicensed Haitian immigrant there crashed into a school bus, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark.

At the presidential debate last month, former President Donald Trump also suggested that some of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating pets. Democrats balked at the suggestion, but statements from Springfield residents indicate that maltreatment of wildlife is a problem in the area.

"I [saw] a group of Haitian people — there was about four of them — and all had geese in their hand," one resident stated during a 911 call on August 26.

Anthony Harris, a 28-year-old Springfield resident, said at an August city council meeting: "They're in the park grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off and walking off with them and eating them."

"I don't know how y'all can be comfortable with this."

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Flashback: Biden in 2006 tells MSNBC's Chris Matthews 'illegal aliens' must 'learn to speak English,' 'earn their way' in



Last week, Democrats spent quite a bit of energy criticizing President Joe Biden for daring — amid his State of the Union address — to characterize Laken Riley's suspected murderer as an "illegal."

You know, as opposed to being outraged over the murder itself — and for policies that allowed the suspect to roam across the U.S. border in the first place.

Biden, of course, dutifully walked back his "illegal" characterization during an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart over the weekend: "I shouldn’t have used 'illegal.' It’s 'undocumented.'" When Capehart asked Biden if he regretted using the "illegal" term, Biden replied, "Yes."

It wasn't always that way.

Let's flash back to another MSNBC clip that's been making the rounds on social media since left-wing undergarments got in a twist over Biden's ghastly "illegal" utterance.

It's a 2006 video of then-U.S. Sen. Biden telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews that "illegal aliens" need to "learn to speak English," among other requirements for getting to reside in the U.S.

In the clip, Matthews kicks things off with — count 'em — three "illegal" references in one question as he asks Biden if there's "a Democratic Party position which accommodates the need to stop illegal entry, punish people who hire people with cheap wages illegally, and also gives hope to people who live here illegally and people who want to come here right now?"

After some back and forth, Matthews asks Biden if you can "scare an employer in this country, whether he's an agricultural worker or a housewife, into not hiring an illegal because the punishment's so high that if you get caught, it's a huge embarrassment to your family, and you may just ... get hit with a fine that'll kill you?"

Biden replies, "Absolutely you can, and that's what we should do. I think we should do that."

From there, Biden remarks that Democrats understand that "illegal aliens ... have to have a way to earn their way into the deal. This isn't amnesty." He also says that "they pay a fine, they gotta learn to speak English, they gotta pass tests."

Matthews chimes in on the importance of encouraging illegal immigrants to learn English, even adding that "English is gonna unite this country potentially. It always has in the past."

Biden then observes that "I can't think of a country that has two languages as their accepted languages that is doing all that well, including Switzerland and/or Canada."

Matthews says that having multiple languages in the U.S. "divides us. You can't talk to each other."

Oh, how times have changed. Check it out:

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