Census may affect House seats:
Influx of illegal immigrants in California could impact apportionment in Washington, new report says

By Mike Swift
MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Launched: 10/02/2007 03:05:29 AM PDT

Forty-three percent of Orange County residents speak a language other than English at home, with Santa Ana ranking first in the nation for the largest proportion of Spanish-speakers, according to census data released today.

Anaheim ranks fourth, narrowly beating out Los Angeles and San Antonio, according to the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, which covered 700,000 households last year.

The two cities are dealing with their Spanish-speaking populations differently. Santa Ana city officials responded to an influx of immigrants more than a decade ago by adopting policies that call for hiring bilingual workers. The result has been a better response to the community's needs, say city leaders. Bilingual police officers, for example, can deal directly with grandmothers worried about crime.

"The need was there and we just had to do it," said Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters. "The officers in the 1980s kept saying we need more bilingual officers to deal with the calls."

Anaheim, meanwhile, has not adopted such bilingual policies, and city officials there sometimes struggle with communicating with the large immigrant population. At a recent City Council meeting, two residents addressed the council in Spanish but city leaders had trouble understanding their concerns.

The survey also shows that about one-third of the county was born outside the United States, primarily in Latin American or Asian countries. About 300,000 residents speak Asian or Pacific Islander languages.

In Santa Ana, 74 percent of residents speak Spanish at home. In Anaheim, nearly 43 percent do.

Demographers say Anaheim and Santa Ana have become magnets for immigrants who traditionally would have gone to Los Angeles upon arrival in the United States. But the higher unemployment rate in Los Angeles, which already has a large immigrant population, means more competition for jobs.

"California has had a very dynamic economy in the latter half of the '90s, and that just pulls in lots of people. And a lot of immigrants left the state in the early '90s for places like Las Vegas, and I've heard stories of lots of them coming back," said Frank Bean, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies the migration of Mexicans to the U.S.

"There are jobs here -- restaurants in Laguna Beach or Corona del Mar or hotels in Dana Point -- but it's too expensive to live around there, so if you want to take advantage of that employment opportunity, one of the best places is Santa Ana," said Bean.

As a result, Santa Ana has become a place where Spanish is the dominant language at home, businesses, school playgrounds and churches. All the Catholic churches in the city offer several Spanish- language Masses throughout the week. Wal-Mart greeters chat with everybody in Spanish. Signs posted outside restaurants list the daily specials in Spanish.

Evangelina Castaneda, 42, a house cleaner and PTA leader in Santa Ana, said it is easy to find bilingual personnel in the city's schools, unlike when she arrived 23 years ago from Mexico.

She got more involved in the schools as the language barrier eroded, but said she still wishes she had more opportunity to practice English.

"Before, people spoke a lot less," Castaneda said. "Now, everyone speaks Spanish."

A longstanding policy requires that newly hired Santa Ana police officers be bilingual. City Hall employees who have contact with the public -- workers at counters or telephone operators, for example -- are bilingual.

Four of the seven City Council members are bilingual, as are four of the five Santa Ana Unified School District board members.

"More often, I'm getting calls at City Hall from Spanish-speakers," said Santa Ana Councilman Jose Solorio, himself an immigrant from Michoacan state.

In Anaheim, there is no such bilingual policy in either the Police Department or City Hall. None of the council members speaks Spanish fluently. One of the five Anaheim Union High School District board members speaks Spanish fluently.

"It is a challenge with communication," said Anaheim Councilwoman Shirley McCracken. "I understand some Spanish because I come from an Italian family, and I play my Spanish tapes in the car all the time."

McCracken said it is unlikely that the city would hire a translator for City Council meetings or require that employees be bilingual. The cost of a translator would be burdensome at a time when the city is cutting back on expenses, she said.

"That means I'd have to give up my office if we required everyone to be bilingual. English is the official language of our country," she said.

Register staff writers Maria Sacchetti and Annalisa Burgos contributed to this report.