U.S. English

U.S. English
Formation	1983
Type	Public policy think tank
Headquarters	1747 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Location	Washington, D.C.
Chairman/CEO	Mauro E. Mujica
Website	www.usenglish.org

U.S. English, Inc. is an American political advocacy group founded in 1983 by Senator S. I. Hayakawa and Dr. John Tanton to advocate the adoption of the English language as the official language of the United States of America. The organization has its headquarters in Washington DC.^[1]

Current Leadership

Mauro E. Mujica is the current Chairman of the Board/CEO of U.S English. He has held that position since 1993. He was educated at Columbia University and holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture.^[2]

A naturalized citizen, Mujica was born in Antofagastia, Chile, and moved to the Untied States in 1964. He is fluent in five languages and lives in Washington, D.C. while spending weekends in Boca Raton, Florida.^[3]

He is married to Georgetown University professor of Spanish and novelist Barbara Mujica.

Early Advisory Board Members

Early advisory board members included Alistair Cooke, Saul Bellow, Walter Cronkite, Norman Cousins, Gore Vidal, Norman Podhoretz, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some of them are no longer affiliated with the group. Schwarzenegger is still a board member.

Current Advisory Board Members

Current members of the Advisory Board are listed as: Jacques Barzun, Ph.D., Edward A. Capano, Denton Cooley, M.D., Midge Decter, Jorge Delgado, Dinesh Desai, Mrs. Richard DeVos, Andre Emmerich, George Gilder, Nathan Glazer, Ph.D., Charles Gogolak, Lee Majors, Laura McKenzie, Harvey Meyerhoff, Barbara Mujica, Ph.D., Alex Olmedo, Arnold Palmer, Margie Petersen, Norman Podhoretz, Donald M. Ross, Randolph Rowland, James Schlesinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Scripps, Norman D. Shumway, Rodney Smith, Togo Tanaka, Alex Trebek, George W. Wilson, Roger Wildermuth and Rosalyn Yalow, Ph.D..^[4]

To date, the United States federal government has recognized no official language, even though nearly all federal, state and local government business is conducted in English. Some states and territories do have English as an official language; a few have passed laws embracing another language alongside English, such as Hawaiian in the state of Hawaii. In total, 30 states have English as their official language. The U.S. House of Representatives passed English as the official language in 1996, but the Senate did not act on the measure before the conclusion of the 104th Congress.

In the view of U.S. English's members, making English the official language of the U.S. would mean that all government business must be conducted in English, "with commonsense exceptions" of necessity, for example the dissemination of public-health information to non-English speaking immigrant communities.

Opponents of the goals of the U.S. English organization or of English as the official language object that the practice would express a bias against immigrants who have not yet learned English. U.S. English suggests that the practice would instead encourage immigrants to learn English more quickly, and thereby reap greater economic and political benefits. Thus, in the view of many supporters of this approach—including members of other English-only advocacy groups—the move to make English the only official language can have benefits for non-English speakers, and is not a form of legalized discrimination.

Walter Cronkite was once a board member of the organization, while Linda Chavez was once executive director. A leak by the Arizona Republic newspaper of a memo from John Tanton,^[5] which some including Cronkite believed went too far in its characterization of Latinos, prompted Chavez and Cronkite to resign.^{[citation needed]} Cronkite called the memo "embarrassing". John Tanton also severed his ties to the group in 1988 following the leak of the memo, and is no longer associated with U.S. English; he later went on to found a separate pro-official English group, ProEnglish.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

• U.S. English, Inc.

Notes