Thread: Santa Ana: Desperate for English-speaking workers

Business Leaders in California City Launch Campaign Urging Immigrants to Learn English

Tuesday, April 10, 2007


LOS ANGELES — Desperate for English-speaking workers, business leaders in a heavily immigrant California city have launched a $4.5 million campaign to persuade residents to learn the language.

The campaign in Santa Ana, where more than three-quarters of residents are Hispanic and less than 15 percent speak English at home, offers free language classes at a community college and take-home study kits.

"Employers have been coming to us saying: 'Look, we don't have enough people to hire that speak English," said Dale Ward, executive vice president of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce.

"Two-thirds of our workforce does not qualify for an entry-level job in growth industries because they do not speak English or do not speak English well enough."

Santa Ana, a working-class city 40 miles south of Los Angeles, has long been a magnet for immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. About 76 percent of residents are Hispanic, 11 percent Asian and about 11 percent white.

Ward said that out of about 350,000 residents of Santa Ana, which is the most densely populated city in California after San Francisco, about 313,000 speak a language other than English at home.

Ads touting the education campaign are plastered on buses, bus shelters, grocery stores and elsewhere. Using eye-catching slogans such as "You Work and Work but You Still Can't Make It," the ads try aim to convince immigrants that they can improve their lives in the United States if they learn English.

Ward said the goal of the campaign was to make some 50,000 Santa Ana residents proficient in English by 2009. The local college offering the free English classes has received 366 phone calls since the ads first aired in February, he said.

Though illegal immigration is one of the most divisive issues in the United States, Ward said the campaign has received a positive response.

"We're not into it for political reasons. We're just trying to build a strong work force," he said
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,265171,00.html

Why do they need English speakers when nearly 90% of the residents speak a language other than English at home.

When I was a young man, some years ago, this was a lovely city of about 90,000. It consisted mostly of Germans, first and second generation. My wife and I would often go there to eat in a little restaurant that reminded me of being in Bavaria. Today the city looks like downtown Bangladesh on a saturday night. Filth and trash everywhere. Disposable diapers thrown out of car windows into the street. Sidewalks covered with chewing gum. Beer and tequila bottles litter the gutters. Graffiti literally EVERYWHERE. It is truly a third world environment. Anyone who could speak English has long since fled. This is what the liberals back East don't realize as they rush to assist the illegal aliens. Once they are established in numbers they want nothing to do with anything American. Thet want only THEIR language and customs. Believe me, I've been through this from the get go.

Boy, am I fed up with our tax dollars going to things like this!

WE have better things to do with our tax dollars, than keep spending them on these things.

What about our elderly, our schools, etc.?

If some company hires someone that can't speak english, then let that company buy the Rosetta language program, and let them learn that way!

It's not up to tax payers to pay for everything!

My gosh if California doesn't deserve this I don't know who does, all the middle class Americans that were driven out of their home towns the last 20 years so the Hispanics could turn Calif. into Mexico! looks like the old saying you "you reap what you sow" is still holding true.

By the way the 10 percent of English speaking Anglo's still there are someones realitives, they probably could not afford to flee that state for many reasons, so have been forced to live in these conditions.

These are some of the American Anglo families that have been split up,(of course we aren't aloud to speak of them) or we are racist, forgive me just couldn't help myself. But I still have relatives there for many reasons, not because they really want to be.

Won't be long and California's main or largest tax base will be All GONE. Way to go all you self serving polititicians, and greedy business owners!!