Americans believe by large majorities that it is more important for newcomers to learn English than it is for their fellow citizens to become bilingual.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey reveals that 83% of likely voters place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language.

Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in a recent speech in Colorado, said "Everybody should be bilingual, or everybody should be trilingual", but 68% of the nation’s voters do not agree.

Only 26% share Mr. Obama’s belief.

Broken down along party lines, 79% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats reject the idea that all Americans should know multiple languages. Among unaffiliated voters, 68% say their fellow citizens do not need to know a language other than English.

Last fall, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 77% of Americans believed that employers should be allowed to require employees to speak English while on the job.

With the Supreme Court recently upholding tougher standards for voter identification at the polls, 65% of voters now believe election ballots should only be printed in English. Thirty-two percent (32%) say they should be printed in both English and Spanish.

Those numbers have risen since last November, when 59% of voters favored English-only ballots and government documents and 35% thought they should be printed in both languages.

Over half the nation's voters (54%) say it is more important to encourage all immigrants to embrace American culture than it is to reduce the number of immigrants. Thirty-six percent (36%) take the opposite view.

A separate survey conducted earlier this week found that 77% believe people who come to America should adopt this country’s culture. Rejecting a common criticism of this belief, 61% said the United States is “a fair and decent country” as opposed to 25% who claimed it is “unfair and discriminatory.”

A survey conducted in January found that 80% agree with the Supreme Court and say everyone should be required to show photo identification before voting.

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