My stance on this is, that if you live in this country, you had better be prepared to speak English. Maybe it isn't the government's place to force English, but it is in your best interests to learn it.

My last rotation at Stanford ER, we had a hispanic male come in, late 50's, clearly suffered a stroke. Didn't speak a word of English, and nobody in the ER spoke Spanish (which I thought was odd, but nobody fessed up to knowing Spanish). The Spanish interpreter on call was in another department and was going to be delayed. So the guy keeps trying to pull out the IV's, and we're trying to get him to stop, but none of us know how to tell him this and he's not responding to English commands. We ended up tieing him to the bed, and he put up a pretty good fight. Then his daughter (who also didn't speak any English) showed up. She managed to get him to calm down, but it wasn't until the translator showed up that we found out about conflicting drugs/medications he'd been taking and that he had some drug allergies.

Bottom line is, a lot of critical information needs to be passed in a timely manner with regard to patient history and condition. And, like it or not, most ER personnel in this country don't speak Spanish. So, it's in every immigrant's best interests to learn to communicate in English.