Immigrant progress in San Joaquin County ranks near the bottom of a new survey, today’s story says.
An interesting category in the survey is “Warmth of Welcome.”
“Warmth of Welcome takes seriously the understanding that immigrants contribute to the strength of their region – and so measures if the region views them favorably and worth the investment,” the study says.
SJ gets poor marks.
“Despite San Joaquin’s rich immigrant history, the prevailing conservative tenor makes progress on integration an uphill battle,” the survey says.
Translation: the region historically has high immigration, but residents dislike immigrants. Mull that one over.
“San Joaquin scored 2.2 in this category, ranking ninth among the 10 regions,” the survey says.” The region does moderately well in academic performance (preparing its English learners to excel in high school) and media messaging.”
By “media messaging” I assume they mean The Record and other media are generally positive towards immigrants. Which is true.
But, “The region ranks low in its capacity to serve its immigrant population; there are approximately five immigrant-serving organizations for the region’s some 86,000 non-citizen immigrants, which partially explains the weak infrastructure for naturalization. The region also needs more English language courses.”
They’re saying we haven’t made a very good melting pot. And this holds back immigrants. Unsaid — because it is outside the survey’s purview — is that retarding immigrants holds the county back, too.
