The former. I spent Christmas with some Mexican/British friends and they have family in the US.
So what is happening in the US in some places, is it just based on colour of skin?
Pure ignorance. I loved the "speak English". That shows how stupid the abusers are if they don't know that the US doesn't have it's own language. 
Countries that are built on immigration are going to have a lot of different languages from other countries and not everyone is going to speak the same imported language.
I had the misfortune to see a small part of a Jerry Springer show when I was flicking channels, which seemed to be filmed a long time ago, but there was someone ranting about Mexicans speaking Spanish in the US. Do the Spanish in the US get picked on for speaking their own language? Or the Italians for speaking Italian? Or is it just the darker skinned people like Mexicans, who happen to speak the Spanish language?
Well, the US has had a very anti-immigration stance for pretty much the last century and longer. Not to say that we didn't HAVE immigration, because we still had a LOT, I mean vast swathes of the US were unclaimed throughout our history and ANYONE could come over as long as they were interested in homesteading. But he people who already lived here didn't want the new immigrants and had horrible views of them.
- Asians moving over during the Wild West/Gold Rush times - lots of laws to make their lives difficult.
- The Irish immigrating during the Famine years. They were hated by a LOT of people. Have you seen Blazing Saddles? They make a 'joke about being willing to take the blacks and the Chinese but not the Irish. Seriously. It happened in the movie and it absolutely happened in real life.
- Then all of the hispanics moving to America from Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean countries, were treated terribly.
- The Greeks were looked down on, the Italians were looked down on. We didn't have a lot of immigrants from Spain, I think mostly in part to how Communist/Fascist they were and a lot of their immigrants probably went to South American instead... Our Spanish speakers are mostly from Latin and South America.
Anyone who moves to America and doesn't speak English will get told at some time in their lives to 'learn the language.' Basically, if you weren't born in America you were treated poorly by someone.
I personally believe if you are going to move to a country, you should learn the language. I would be expected to learn French if I moved to France. I wouldn't expect people to speak English, though I know many of them do. But I would REALLY try to be fluent in French as soon as possible.
And no, at a federal level there isn't an 'official language' but 32 states have designated English as the official language. And I have to say, I was taught in school that English is the official language of the US. I guess all of my teachers over stepped themselves there...
When 80% of the country speaks only English in teh home, it's as good as the official language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_StatesBy the way... the United Kingdom doesn't have an official language either... It only has a national langauge of English, just like the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_KingdomThe de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English,[3][4] which is spoken by approximately 59.8 million residents, or 98% of the population, over the age of three.[1][2][10][11][12] An estimated 700,000 people speak Welsh in the UK,[13] an official language in Wales,[14] and the only de jure official language in any part of the UK.[15] Approximately 1.5 million people in the UK speak Scots—although there is debate as to whether this is a distinct language, or a variety of English.[5][16]
And during the main 'melting pot' years EVERYONE who came to America learned English so they would better fit into the country. Some refused to teach their children the language of their grandparents so they would fit in and be better American citizens.
