English in America

I read a story tonight about a high-school student in Kansas City, KS who got suspended from school for speaking spanish in the hallway to another student. Immigration has had a huge effect on our culture, both inside and outside the church. A lot of people argue that since they are here, they need to learn english. I think that is very true, for the good of them, and us, they ought to be able to communicate at least on a basic level with us in english. If you read the article it seems that the school district went to far in suspending him because a gave a very short answer to someone who asked a question in spanish. I guess my question is, how far should we take it? I don't think any of us want to take away their cultural identity from them, but should we be getting so hostile with them when they speak spanish to each other?

Regarding the church implications; we had stake conference recently, and in the stake president's talk, he mentioned the fact that there were a very large number of latins joining the church, and that the latin population was growing very rapidly in this area of the church. He then went on to suggest that we as members learn some spanish so we can communicate with them. I talked with Keith Hepworth afterwards and we were both thinking, wait, why don't they learn some english? Maybe I took his remark out of context, and maybe he didn't mean that the latins had no responsibilty to learn english, but it is definitly a new challenge for the church. There has been a big struggle in the Kaw River ward getting the latin members and the anglo members to connect. They can't, mostly because of the latin members' unwillingness to take seriously the task of learning english.

So how do we as both Americans and Latter-day Saints deal with this problem of a growing spanish-only speaking population?