Question must be answered based on the following text.
“‘English Only': The movement to limit Spanish speaking in US’”
“The reactions against people who speak Spanish are probably not new," says Heidi
Beirich, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC
monitors hate groups in the US, which they define as any organisation that - based
on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities
- has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for
their immutable characteristics. In this sense, the SPLC qualifies as hate groups
several organisations that it considers anti-immigrant, such as the Federation for
American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Washington DC-based Center for
Immigration Studies (CIS).
Also on their list is ProEnglish, which advocates for English to be designated as the
official language of the United States. All of them were created in recent decades
by John Tanton, a white American far-right nationalist, who died in July of this year.
Mr. Tanton founded at least 12 anti-immigrant organisations, six of which have been
designated hate groups by the SPLC. The aforementioned ProEnglish is one of the
main organisations pushing the "English Only" movement, also known as "English
First" or "Official English" movement. Part of ProEnglish's official platform states:
"In a pluralistic nation such as ours, the function of government should be to foster
and support the similarities that unite us, rather than institutionalise the differences
that divide us." The organisation focuses its efforts on lobbying to convince
legislators and public opinion of the need to adopt English as an official language
at all levels of government.
While ProEnglish establishes on its website that "the right to use other languages
must be respected", the group has been criticised by those who consider their
agenda to be discriminatory. “They are careful to be called ProEnglish and not ‘antiSpanish’. But it is clear that their ideology is supremacist, referring to English as a
symbol of US cultural heritage when this country has never been a project only in
English, says SPLC researcher Heidi Beirich.
Adapted from: DIÉZ, Beatriz. “‘English Only': The movement to limit Spanish speaking in US’”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50550742