http://www.rrstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /110170048

Rockford has often been a mecca for immigrants.

By Sarah Roberts
ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR
Click here for more information about Sarah Roberts

ROCKFORD — When Liz Rios-Nieves and her family first arrived in Rockford from Miami in 1998, it took them a couple of years to find a support network of fellow Hispanics.

“It wasn’t hard for us to come here, but it was not what we were accustomed to. It seemed, at least to us, that there weren’t very many Hispanics,” Rios-Nieves said. “But by 2000, we saw more Hispanic people moving down here from Chicago and the suburbs looking for a good place to live and raise their children.”

Since that year, Hispanics have accounted for more than 84 percent of Winnebago County’s growth, according to local demographers. At the current rate, the number of Hispanics could surpass the number of blacks by the end of the decade.

Similar trend nationally
It’s the same story on a national level. As America prepares to welcome its 300 millionth person sometime today, several academics have theorized that the person will be a Latino either born in or entering Los Angeles.

As of Monday night, America’s official population was 299,995,686, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau predicts the country’s population will reach 300 million at 6:46 Central time this morning. The estimate is based on the expectation that the United States will register one birth every seven seconds, one death every 13 seconds and one immigrant every 31 seconds for a net increase of one person every 11 seconds.

While it’s nearly impossible to measure the Rockford area in any comparable terms, local demographers say, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on what and who have helped us grow throughout the years. A look at available data shows the Rockford area as a place with a rich history of immigration and a reputation as a haven for refugees of war-torn countries.

In 1995, Rios-Nieves and her husband packed up their belongings and left their native Puerto Rico for America in order to provide a better life for their three small children.

“It was a combination of the economic situation in the country, and we were young parents who just wanted better for our kids,” Rios-Nieves said.

Change in 10 years
After three years in Miami, a job opportunity led the family to Rockford. Rios-Nieves now works at Optical Outlook of Rockford and is the assistant pastor at First Hispanic Church of Rockford, which recently moved to its fourth location to accommodate its growing congregation. Once a country establishes a presence in an area, it opens the door for others, she said.

“We have people call us from out of town and, in our case, they’re looking for a Hispanic church,” Rios-Nieves said. “When they come to our church, they meet Spanish-speaking people who are professionals and have businesses and they feel like they can move here and find whatever they need. It wasn’t that way 10 years ago.”

The steady growth of the Rockford area’s Hispanic population represents the largest group of immigrants since the early 1900s, when thousands of northern Europeans, primarily from Sweden, Ireland, England and Wales, arrived. Winnebago County more than doubled its population from 1910 to 1920. The county’s population grew steadily throughout the next three decades and skyrocketed in the ’50s and ’60s, reaching the 150,000 and 200,000 milestones.

Manufacturing problems
At one time, Rockford was on track to be one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, according to demographers, before an industrial decline and overall slow growth kicked in.

“We were probably one of the fastest-growing communities in the country up to 1975, when things started slowing down due to problems in manufacturing,” said Joel Cowen, assistant dean of Health Systems Research in Rockford.

If people weren’t coming to Rockford for jobs at that time, they were coming for other reasons.

In 1975, Rockford Catholic Charities began its Refugee and Immigration Services program. Its first clients in the late ’70s and early ’80s were Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians fleeing from the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

“Over the years, the faces of refugees change, depending on where conflicts are in world,” director Jeanne Lindberg said.

Polish refugees and Vietnamese freed from re-education camps flocked here throughout the 1980s, followed by Bosnians in the early 1990s. The Eastern European resettlement effort has been ongoing since 1993, Lindberg said. In that time, the program has brought nearly 2,000 refugees to the Rockford area.

Last year, the organization began focusing heavily on parts of Africa, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Myanmar. Depending on the country, six-member families, young couples and single mothers will continue to arrive in Rockford looking for a new start.

“If you see there’s trouble in some part of the world,” Lindberg said, “we’re probably going to end up resettling refugees here.”

Staff writer Sarah Roberts can be reached at 815-987-1369 or sroberts@rrstar.com.

National growth
The U.S. population will reach 300 million today. That’s a far cry from the first U.S. census in 1790 when the population was discovered to be 3,929,214. Of course, the country was much smaller in those days.

The population is reaching 300 million 39 years after it hit 200 million (in 1967) and 91 years after it reached 100 million (in 1915).
It is expected to reach 400 million by 2050.

Most of the population growth in this country is occurring in the South and the West. California and Texas are the two most populous states.

Although the U.S. population is growing, numbers in Europe and Japan are down. Europe is projected to lose 75 million in population between now and 2050, while Japan is projected to lose about 16 million.

Sources: The Associated Press, The World Almanac, U.S. Census Bureau