Thread: End of a Trend? (Forsyth County NC)

End of a Trend? Some local Hispanics say as economy slows, work gets harder to find, and some think of leaving

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2008 ... rend/?news

By Wesley Young | Journal Reporter
Published: August 7, 2008



Forsyth County's Hispanic population grew 8 percent last year and accounted for almost 40 percent of the county's population growth, new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show.

But some local Hispanics said yesterday that the jobs Hispanics have held in the local economy are becoming harder to find, causing some workers to leave or consider leaving.

There's also a debate about whether immigration-enforcement efforts may affect Hispanic population totals, because many Hispanics are not in the country legally.

"I know a bunch of guys who say they are going to go somewhere else because there is no work," said Jessica Serrano, 16, who works for family at Bella's Taqueria, a restaurant on Sprague Street. The people thinking of leaving have been working in construction and similar jobs, she said. She said she knows of others who can't attend college here because they are not in the country legally.

The Census Bureau puts Forsyth County's Hispanic population at 34,874 as of July 1, 2007, in estimates released last night. Hispanics made up slightly more than 10 percent of the county's total population, which was estimated at 338,744. Between 2006 and 2007 the county added about 6,812 people, the estimates show, with the number of Hispanics growing by about 2,595.

The Census Bureau estimates do not distinguish between legal and illegal residents.
Non-Hispanic whites were the slowest-growing group in Forsyth, the estimates show, increasing by 0.9 percent to a 2007 total of about 209,305. Non-Hispanic blacks in Forsyth increased by 2 percent to about 85,393.

Forsyth County's total population increased about 2.1 percent from 2006 to 2007.
Since the 2000 census, the annual population increase among Hispanics in Forsyth has ranged from 7.5 percent to 12 percent.

Serrano said she may eventually go back to her home state of California because she finds life in Winston-Salem slow. But her sister, Flor Lopez, who has three boys under the age of 5 -- all born in Winston-Salem -- said that life is good here because it is quiet. The sisters and other family members came here from California in 2000.

"We are here for now, but I don't know about forever," Lopez said. "We are OK here. The schools are a lot better than over there (in California). I've heard a lot of people say that the jobs are really hard right now but they don't say that they are going to leave." Instead, she said, people are looking for work further afield outside Winston-Salem.

Forsyth County's Hispanics are youthful. The new estimates for 2007 show that 17.5 percent were younger than 5 and almost 30 percent were younger than 10. By contrast, only 11 percent of non-Hispanic whites were younger than 10.

In Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, about 16 percent of the students were Hispanic in the 2007-08 school year.

The 2007 Census Bureau estimates could be the last in a run of steady increases in Hispanic growth here, said Alejandro Manrique, the executive editor of Que Pasa, a Spanish-language newspaper in Winston-Salem.
"Probably for the next year when those census figures come out, there will be a little decrease, and it will show that some people have gone back to Central America or Mexico," Manrique said. "The economic downturn has produced somewhat of an exodus. We have seen that people are getting paid less because they are asked to work less."

Reverse migration hasn't been a huge trend in the Triad, he said, but in Charlotte, a direct bus to Mexico has been running daily on weekdays instead of three days a week as it did formerly. Manrique said that Mecklenburg County's participation in a program in which sheriff's deputies check arrestees to see whether they are in the country legally is causing some people to leave. The program is usually called "287(g)," after the law that created it.

"If one of your family members is deported or you can't get a job or you are laid off, they will go back, everybody," Manrique said.
James H. Johnson Jr., a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who co-wrote a groundbreaking study in 2006 on the economic effect of Hispanics in North Carolina, said he thinks that economic and immigration issues are intertwined.

"With the massive downturn in the construction trades and the housing market, there is no question of an impact," Johnson said. "The biggest question is what is happening in the enforcement of laws. The more the economy is down and everyone is suffering, the more scapegoating there is among natives."

Mecklenburg County entered into the 287(g) program in February 2006. According to the Census Bureau estimates, Mecklenburg County's Hispanic population increased almost 11 percent from July 1, 2006, to July 1, 2007 -- a rate of increase only slightly less than from 2005 to 2006. Johnson said that the bureau's estimates may not be reliable and thinks that they may underestimate the effect of immigration enforcement on population figures.

In Forsyth County, Sheriff Bill Schatzman said he doesn't think that the 287(g) program -- or the lack of it in Forsyth -- makes much of a difference in whether Hispanics choose to live here. "Those who come here to work go to where the work is," he said.

Forsyth County Commissioner Debra Conrad, an advocate of 287(g), says she thinks that its scope is "very limited" compared with more intense efforts that could be made.

But immigration crackdowns "can't get everyone," Serrano said. She said she thinks that Hispanics will continue to make their mark here -- and eat at her family's restaurant.

"I don't think a really big majority are leaving," she said "A lot of people have really good jobs."
â–* Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.

Reverse migration hasn't been a huge trend in the Triad, he said, but in Charlotte, a direct bus to Mexico has been running daily on weekdays instead of three days a week as it did formerly. Manrique said that Mecklenburg County's participation in a program in which sheriff's deputies check arrestees to see whether they are in the country legally is causing some people to leave. The program is usually called "287(g)," after the law that created it.

"If one of your family members is deported or you can't get a job or you are laid off, they will go back, everybody," Manrique said.

Indeed, enforcement works, we MUST keep on doing it!

Just like the Winston Salem Journal to blend Hispanics with illegal aliens.

The correct term is that MOST HISPANICS IN FORSYTH COUNTY ARE ILLEGAL. Not "Many"

W