In 1996 the chairman of the US House Policy Committee, Congressman Christopher Cox, stated that ‘English, our common language, provides a shared foundation which … allowed people from every corner of the world to come together to build the American nation.’ More recently, James Crawford suggested that Californians could explain their support for Proposition 227 (dismantling the state's bilingual education programme) by saying, ‘If you live in America, you need to speak English.’ For some Americans there is ‘a patriotic subtext: one flag, one language’.

These opinions reflect one side of the growing public debate about multilingualism and the changing ethnic make-up of the population of the United States. There is in America today an ‘English Only’ movement that is campaigning to have an amendment added to the United States Constitution that would, for the first time, make English the national language. While this proposal has, to date, been defeated, at least twenty-six states have declared English their official language.

Few people, either inside or outside of US politics, can ignore the changing ethnic mix of the population of the United States. On 18 September 2000, Newsweek magazine reported that in at least four US states, most notably California, ethnically ‘white’ Americans were now a minority and the suggested trend means that by the end of this decade two more states will record similar census results.

Former president Bill Clinton affirmed the ‘right’ to bilingualism in Executive Order 13166.