Blurred Borders - International Community Foundation

participants preferred Spanish than Central San Diego (although
this difference, it should be emphasized, is within the survey’s
margin of error).
The issue of language to use is especially important for surveys
such as ICF’s project. According to 2000 Census data, nearly
22% of San Diego County’s population with 5 or more years of
age speak Spanish at home (see chart at right); of these, nearly
half (i.e.: approximately 10.5%) reported that they speak English
“less than well” – a figure that is supported by the choice of 14.6% of San Diego participants to
do the survey in Spanish.
2. Place of Birth
In order to better understand how familiar citizens of each side of the border are to each other,
participants were asked to name their place of birth. The results are below:
Table 1B: Place of Birth
Please name your place of
birth:
San Diego
County
Other
areas of
California
A-2
Other
areas of
the United
States
Mexico Other
SD-COMBINED 19.9% 21.1% 27.7% 23.7% 7.6%
SD-ENGLISH 22.2% 23.7% 31.8% 14.1% 8.3%
SD-SPANISH 5.9% 4.7% 2.4% 83.5% 3.5%
San Diego-By SubRegion
South San Diego 24.6% 9.2% 13.5% 46.9% 5.8%
Central San Diego 17.9% 30.5% 32.1% 11.1% 8.4%
North San Diego 16.6% 24.2% 37.0% 13.3% 9.0%
Please name your place of
birth:
Tijuana
Other
Area of
Baja
California
Other
Area of
Mexico
Language Spoken At Home
San Diego County (population 5+ yrs.)
English-
Only
67%
US Other
Tijuana 46.2% 9.5% 40.8% 2.0% 1.5%
Several items clearly stand out when looking at the results from both San Diego County and
Tijuana:
� First, although Tijuana is often cited as a city of “non-natives” (i.e.: people that were not
born in the city), the results from San Diego imply much more transitory population, with
less than 20% of respondents stating that they were born in San Diego County. Only
approximately 41% of respondents claimed to have been border in either San Diego
County or in California (this result is consistent with US Census data showing that 43.9%
of County residents were born in California, and 32.9% were born in other U.S. states).
� San Diego’s results contrast somewhat with the 46% of Tijuana participants that stated
they were native to the city (note: Mexico’s 2000 Census results report 40% of the
Other
11%
Spanish
22%