Global Wellspring Adds Diversity to South Bay Landscape : Population: Census figures reveal a dramatic leap in the percentage of foreign-born residents in the past decade.

The South Bay, once home to a homogenous Anglo population, is becoming a rich palette of cultures.

Newly released U.S. Census Bureau data shows that about half of the area’s foreign-born residents arrived in just the past decade.

About a fourth of the South Bay’s 893,000 residents were born in another country, and nearly a third of the population in some South Bay central areas is foreign-born. Similar figures from the 1980 Census show that only about 15% of the area’s residents came from other countries.

The new faces and voices of the South Bay come from every part of the globe: Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Samoa, the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iran . . .

“It’s just like a little United Nations,” said Lori Rayor, director of a literacy project for foreign-born families in the Torrance Unified School District. “What we need to realize here is that it’s not a liability to have a different language or a different culture. It’s an asset.”

Among the cities that have changed most are Carson, which went from a 16.7% foreign-born population in 1980 to 27% in 1990; Inglewood, which jumped from 17.2% in 1980 to 28.9%; Torrance, which saw its 13.4% foreign-born population rise to 22.2% in 1990, and all four of the cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, including Rancho Palos Verdes, which went from 14.5% to 23.2%, and Rolling Hills Estates, which went from 8.9% in 1980 to 15.7%.

Census data shows that many of the South Bay’s new immigrants were born in Mexico and Central America. But a nearly equal number have come from Asia and the South Pacific.

Carson and Gardena are now home to more Samoans than there are in West Samoa, experts say. Carson’s Filipino population is the among the largest in the United States.

As Los Angeles International Airport has become the Ellis Island of the Pacific Rim, city officials have discovered that new immigrants often venture only a few miles from that port of entry before they settle down.

Dozens of ethnic neighborhoods have sprung up, their languages, cultures and consumer patterns creating a colorful global panoply among the South Bay’s bland tract homes and strip malls.

In Gardena, families from Japan can find a supermarket, doctor, library and private schools without having to use English. In Wilmington, a thriving Latino community has a Spanish-language barber shop, bookstore, day-care center and Catholic church within one short block. And in Hawthorne, where a refugee center helps more than 700 immigrants enter Los Angeles County each year, a strong Vietnamese community has formed.

“I feel like one whole little village from Vietnam came and moved right here near the office,” said Sharon Kellman, director of the All Culture Friendship Center, which provides refugee services.

“The first folks who arrived moved in close to us because it was convenient, and then when they brought their relatives over here, of course, they moved near here, too,” Kellman said. “Then their friends, and friends of friends, started to come, and they were looking for familiar faces and a familiar language, and that’s how an ethnic community gets started.”

Even with friendly faces and a native language around them, newcomers discover that the transition to life in America is never easy.

Finding housing and jobs can be intimidating, immigrants say. Commonplace events for Anglos, such as enrolling children in school, or grocery shopping in a new store, can be stress-filled trials.

As new immigrants struggle to survive, learning English becomes a time-consuming chore. But some Americans are impatient with anyone who does not speak English, mistaking an immigrant’s use of a foreign language, or continued reliance on a foreign culture, as a rejection of this country’s way of life.

When Graciela Virguen arrived in Torrance 15 years ago, she dreamed of learning English.

But three months later, at the age of 13, she met and married a man who did not want her to continue going to school. She bore the first of her four children a year later.

“It has been so hard living here and not being able to understand,” she said in Spanish. “People get this attitude when they realize you can’t speak English. . . . Some people are very mean. Some people have made me cry because they were so mean.”

Just getting here nearly cost Sam Tom his life.

Tom, a 41-year-old Vietnamese refugee who arrived in 1984, tried to escape from a Communist “re-education” camp 23 times, 10 times landing in a Vietnamese prison cell. He finally made it to a Malaysian refugee camp in 1983. It took American officials more than a year to confirm that Tom qualified for refugee status because he had worked for the U.S. Army for nine years before the fall of Saigon.

Once he arrived in California, Tom discovered that the young wife he had arranged to smuggle out of Vietnam in 1979 had remarried after hearing he was dead. Less than a month later, Tom became homeless.

“The guy who sponsored me kicked me out of the house because I didn’t have the money to pay him rent,” Tom said. “I found a cousin in Inglewood and lived in his garage for three months.”

Finally, a sympathetic American woman showed him how to apply for work and a driver’s license and loaned him an old car. Now a security officer at the Torrance courthouse, Tom is grateful that she believed in him.

“We come over here and we try to work very hard to make a better life,” he said. “We don’t come over here to get your welfare checks, like people say. We come here for the American dream.”

Tom since has settled in Lawndale, enrolled in college and remarried, this time to a recent immigrant from China. The couple practice English together and with their 2-year-old daughter.

“Sometimes we have problems in communication, but we’re learning,” he said, laughing.

Tom and his wife are not alone in their struggle with English. More than one-third of the South Bay’s 231,000 foreign-born residents told census-takers they speak little or no English.

Hundreds of ESL, or English as a Second Language, courses have sprung up in high schools, colleges, community centers and churches throughout the South Bay to help them learn.

In the Torrance Unified School District, Lori Rayor heads the Family English Literacy Project, which teaches English to foreign-born parents while helping them learn about life in America.

“Parents are the first teachers,” Rayor said. “If we target the parents, maybe through them we can target their kids and help them achieve better academic performance.”

The pilot program focuses on two schools: Torrance Elementary, where participants are almost entirely Spanish-speaking, and Victor Elementary, where the class is predominantly Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

Teachers in the program try to base the parents’ lessons on the literature being used in their children’s classes.

“When your little girl comes home from first grade and says she’s reading ‘The Little Engine That Could,’ that doesn’t mean anything to you if you’re Japanese,” Rayor said. “This way, you can discuss it with her instead of being totally ignorant and having to deal with something that’s totally foreign to you.”

Immigrant mothers enrolled in the program said the lessons have been priceless in many ways.

Catalina Ramirez, who arrived in Torrance from Guadalajara less than three years ago, had never studied English when she enrolled in the project. If a teacher wanted to discuss a problem one of her children was having, the child would end up acting as translator.

Ramirez suspected that her children were not telling her everything the teachers were saying. After just a few months in the project’s English class, she discovered that she was right.

During one school conference two months ago, Ramirez’s 10-year-old son deliberately translated only positive things the teacher said. After a few minutes, Ramirez turned to the boy and scolded him for leaving out the rest.

“His mouth dropped open and he said, ‘Mommy, you understand English?’ ” Ramirez said in Spanish. “I can’t speak English very well yet, but I’m beginning to understand it, and now he knows he can’t cheat on his mother anymore.”

Ramirez wants to learn English to preserve her family, she said.

“One reason Latino families are drifting apart is because of the language difference between the parents and the children,” she said. “We can’t be as much a part of our children’s lives. I’m not going to put up with that anymore. I’m going to learn English.”

While immigrants such as Ramirez are learning to adapt to life here, many South Bay residents are learning to revel in the diversity that has begun to surround them.

“I think of it as a real plus,” said Debra Jonas, director of the American Languages and Culture Program at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “Each culture brings their strengths with them from their country. Each country has its way of doing things, its way of thinking. If you can take the best of all worlds, you can come up with a better community, ultimately.”

Muriel Carrison, an expert in intercultural education at the same university, said city officials need to pay close attention to their ethnic communities and highlight the best they have to offer.

In addition to Cinco de Mayo, Carrison pointed out that communities might also want to celebrate the Asian lunar new year and Cambodia’s new year.

“We should be seeing citywide festivals celebrating those, with everyone invited to come taste the food, hear the music, see the art, experience the heart and soul of the people.”

Jonas agrees, at the same time warning that the South Bay’s transition to a multicultural community will take patience and effort.

“While people are working out the kinks, it’s a difficult transition,” she said. “I think we need to recognize that it’s a long, long battle and it will take a long time for us to work toward a truly melting pot situation.”