¿Spanish TV?

“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set” and avoid Spanish-language books and newspapers, too, according to the recommendation from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Spanish-speaking immigrants who don’t speak English.
His comments came in response to a question about how Hispanic students could improve academically, asked during the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists held in San Jose last week.
This seemed a good chance for him to gain popularity within the Latino population in California, after his criticized comments last October. He was quoted then as saying that immigrants from Mexico still want to be Mexicans even though they live in the U.S. Then, as now, he exhorted Mexican immigrants to learn English and to make an effort to integrate into American life.
Schwarzenegger can’t really compare his own experience learning English with the situation facing current Mexican immigrants. Let’s remember that he came from a middle-class European country, with a good educational base, and when he emigrated to the U.S. he was not concerned about providing his family the essential necessities such as food and a place to live.
So Spanish … ¿yes or no? As a media resource ourselves, we believe that Latin American immigrants need the Spanish newspapers, television and radio at least to become informed about what is going on in this country. That said, we acknowledge that immigrants who don’t speak the language of this country do need to learn English. In order to succeed in school, in labor, and in this society generally, you need to learn the dominant language.
But switching off Spanish TV may not be the best option to learn English. Many immigrants have poor educational backgrounds – in some cases they don’t have any education from their country of origin. They have to confront another problem, the one called illiteracy. We’re fortunate that here in Sonoma Valley we have a literacy program called Community Plaza (Plaza Comunitaria) provided by the Mexican Consulate. Here in Sonoma, we are starting to address the problem of the illiteracy among immigrants, but we can’t say the same thing for other cities in this state or around the U.S. 
We don’t have any doubt that the best way to learn the language of this country is attending school, and here in Sonoma there are classes that serve those people who don’t speak English. To turn off the Spanish TV and to stop reading the Spanish newspapers will not make immigrants become bilingual. We remind our governor what he stated in a 2006 guest editorial in the San Jose Mercury News: the solution is an English-immersion program.