Republicans vying for the GOP presidential nomination are
debating and disagreeing about the economy and foreign policy,
but they backed each other on one issue this week: the English
language. At Monday's debate in Florida, Newt Gingrich said this
week he supports English as an official language of the United
States: "I think it is essential to have a central language that
we expect people to learn and to be able to communicate with
each other in," he said. Mitt Romney said everyone in school
should be learning in English: "English is the language of this
nation," he said. "People need to learn English to be able to be
successful, to get great jobs." Romney, in his 2010 book, "No
Apologies: the Case for American Greatness," highlighted his
support for English-only immersion in Massachusetts public
schools. As governor, he led the state to pass a law against
bilingual education, mandating one year of English-only
transitional language instruction for anyone learning the
language before moving to mainstream cl