Quote:
Originally posted by Rudey
I believe the phrase is "Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other". 
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Perhaps, if you can consider a language spoken on a daily basis by less than 10% of a country's population to be "common and unifying."
The issue is simply whether the Senate amendments to the immigration reform bill confer any legal status on English, as opposed to symbolic status. Since "national" and "common and unifying" confer no real legal status, they do not create an official language.
I think the real issue is one of expectations. The cynic in me thinks that many politicians propose phrases like "national language" and "common and unifying language" in order to placate those who want to see English made the official language of the US, knowing that the phrases they are proposing are really only symbolic and accomplish little.