English as the national language: What are we thinking?

I agree that people come to this country looking for a better life. With that being said I don't see anything wrong with congress voting English as the national language. There should be a national language because in order to get anything accomplished people have to be able to communicate with each other.

This is not to say that people should abandon their native language but when they decide to come here for that better life, then they should actively try to learn to speak English.

There was no reason to have a national language in the past. In the past immigrants came to the country and integrated themselves into society by doing things like learning the language of the land.

The difference now is that immigrants come to the country and they move into communities where they are surrounded by people from their native land. These people have the ability to get everything they need with out leaving their new community. The problem then arises that these people don't see a need to learn English and therefore they don't learn English.

The problem only gets worse when these people finally need to leave their community for something, such as a loan from a bank for example. These people go into the bank and they are not able to communicate and one of two things then happen. Either they don't get the loan or the bank ends up taking advantage of them by giving them the loan with ridiculous rates.

Finally, I don't want you to think that I'm against immigrants coming to this country. This is not case at all. The point I'm trying to make is that when immigrants come here they should learn English just for the simple fact that it is in everyone's best interest.