Official Language of America?

Actually it sort of does matter if English is labeled as the national language.. school curriculums would have to be altered, programs made especially for Spanish speaking individuals (in jobs/schools for instance, ESL programs) would be eliminated, translators would no longer be funded for by the government (forcing hospitals to have to allocate their own funds towards having translators which would take away money from other departments)..etc

It does not really matter if it is labeled as the official language. It basically is the official language, as a majority of the country speaks it. Perhaps it is not labeled as the official language, because it's so obvious that it is ;). No, just kidding. Yes, we have a lot of Spanish speakers from Mexico, but they're still a minority. In fact, our founding fathers were English speakers. So what's the big deal with this? English has always been the official language, even if it is not labeled on a piece of paper as being so.

Having English be the offical language would do so much more harm then good to the nation. Its wrong to turn people away, or not be able to help people just because they don't speak english. If english were to be made the offical language then hospitals would have problems trying to help non-english speakers and legal proceedings would be complicated and lawsuit would be sure to follow. I'm not saying that people shouldn't try to learn english, and in fact I feel that if a person wants to spend an extended amount of time here they should learn to speak english just like I would have to learn their language were I to go to their country, but i don't think we should punish people while thet attempt to learn our language, especially given its high level of difficulty.

Although Americans value the belief that the United States is a multi-cultural/ethnic/lingual country, having english as the official language does not impact that belief. It is important to hold on to those ideals, however, it is also necessary to recognize what is necessary for the overall good of society. In a country where English is already the dominant spoken language, there is no reason why it should not be expected that people residing in the United States know how to speak the common language, while still maintaining their individual traditions and cultures and using their native language at home. If English is not spoken, it becomes difficult for society to provide the basic needs and security to that individual due to problems with communication.

Sadly, I think America's "melting pot" idealism has gone the way of the dodo. As much as I would like to think that we could allow for multi-lingualism in our culture, it's not going to happen. We don't fund our schools to teach children how to speak different languages at early ages, even though it has been proven that is the best time to do it.
The mere fact that we find language barriers annoying bespeaks our own prejudice against those from other backgrounds, other cultures than our own.

All this debate over a national language is not new, either. It's happened countless times during our nation's history, especially at times when our influx of other cultures becomes "too much to handle". Last time this happened in a major way, we were able to put a cap on the influx by turning boats from Italy, Germany, France, and Spain away at the harbor. But now, we can't do that because they're coming in across our border.

But that is a debate for another time.

To this day, the United States has no official language at the federal level (although it is the official language of about 28 states.) Granted, this adds on to the conglomerate that is America, and the massive melting pot of ethnicities. Moreover, by not establishing no one set language, translators in hospitals (etc) are funded for by the government. On the other hand, this would force everyone to learn English in an already English-dominant nation, eliminating language barriers that have been considered both inconvenient (and annoying.)