...Starting Jan. 1, California residents who can’t prove they are in United States legally will be allowed to obtain driver’s licenses under Assembly Bill 60, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last year....
The Department of Motor Vehicles estimates that around 1.5 million immigrants will end up with the new licenses, which will cost $33. Advocate groups estimate there are about 39,000 Stanislaus County residents who have entered the country illegally....
To help handle the anticipated influx of drivers seeking licenses, the DMV is hiring close to 1,000 additional employees, an increase of about 11 percent, said agency spokesman Armando Botello. Four new offices opened around the state....
Fresno will see 35 additional employees, most at the Olive Avenue office. Leaders of Fresno immigrant rights groups think the Valley impact could be somewhere around 200,000 new licenses.
But some of those leaders worry the Spanish test is incomprehensible for Central Valley immigrants. Raul Moreno, chief executive officer of the Education and Leadership Foundation, said many immigrants here have a third- or fourth-grade education and come from rural areas. The Spanish vocabulary used in the DMV study material is very proper, he said.
For example, within a set of flashcards with translations for traffic signals, the “Keep right” sign is translated to “Conserve su derecha.” Moreno said most Spanish-speaking Valley immigrants would say, “Sigue a su derecha” instead.
“You’ve got to speak the language that the people speak,” Moreno said....
http://www.modbee.com/2014/10/19/3600051/undocumented-central-valley-immigrants.html
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