POLITICS AND LEGISLATION IN CITIZENSHIP TESTING IN THE UNITED STATES

Politics, legislation and social attitudes became closely entangled in language planning and policy in the United States soon after its independence. In the last two centuries, political views and legislation regarding immigration and citizenship have swung from libertarian to authoritarian communitarian as different political parties have come to power and made their views known publicly. The debates have been mainly about language and civic nationalism. In terms of language, on the one hand, many political thinkers have argued for a common language or a public monolingualism (see Huntingdon, 2005; Schlesinger, 1992), because they believe a bilingual or multilingual country could result in ghettoization and social immobility (Pogge, 2003).