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by tombert 457 days ago
It already kind of was.

If you want to become a US citizen, you have to show you're competent in English. [1] It's been this case for quite awhile.

I know that doesn't strictly mean that "English is the official language", but it is an official government body requiring you to know English in order to become a US citizen, so that seems a little official to me.

[1] https://www.usa.gov/naturalization

1 comments

Just to clarify, "competent" is a long stretch. It's more like "how are you" -- once you can just _read_ that phrase you're passed. There are couple more questions, but civics are much harder than English (e.g. how many voting representatives are there in Congress?).
> civics are much harder than English

you can learn them all in your native language, and it really doesn't take a lot (done it).

by contrast, you then still need English competency to answer the questions.