US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order making English the official language of the United States, a White House official said on Friday, without specifying when it will be signed.
Designating English as the national language "promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations, and creates a pathway for civic engagement," according to a White House document, reports to Deutsche Welle.
While acknowledging that over 350 languages are spoken in the United States, the White House document says that English has always been "the language of our nation, with historic documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution written in English."
"It is long past time English is recognized as the official language of the United States," the document said.
What does the order stipulate?
Trump's executive order will allow government agencies and organizations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue offering documents and services in languages other than English, according to a fact sheet on the upcoming order.
It will also rescind a mandate issued by former President Bill Clinton that required the government and organizations that receive federal funding to provide language assistance to people who do not speak English.
However, according to the document, agencies will still have "flexibility" to decide how much help to offer in languages other than English.
Does the US need an official language?
The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but there are 32 US states that have adopted English as their official language, according to ProEnglish, a group advocating English as an official language.
Nearly 68 million people speak a language other than English at home, according to 2019 government figures. While English is by far the majority language, more than 40 million people in the US are estimated to speak Spanish at home.
The issue has been problematic for some states where the use of Spanish in public life has been a source of controversy over the years. In Texas, for example, a state senator in 2011 demanded that an immigrant rights activist speak English at a legislative hearing instead of his native Spanish.
That reignited a decades-old debate over whether it is appropriate to speak Spanish in Texas, which was once part of Mexico and before that part of the Spanish Empire.
