Posted on 08/16/2005 8:39:42 AM PDT by Namyak
This is the last of a three-part series that examines the rapidly growing Hispanic population in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
A 3-year-old girl with a small pink baseball hat reaches for a 7-month-old boy’s hand. She gives him a ring of toys, slowly so she doesn’t startle him.
She smiles as his tiny hands fumble with the plastic toys.
The girl is Mexican; the boy is white. She arrived from Yucatan, Mexico, just months ago and speaks only Spanish; he can’t yet speak. Their differences don’t matter. Kids will play.
In the backyard of Grace Fellowship, a small evangelical church on Old River Road in Wilkes-Barre, a crowd mills around a table of food. There are little signs that say where the food comes from: Middle East, U.S.A., Puerto Rico, Korea. That little girl stands by her mother in a circle of people. Their hands are joined. Pastor Bob Susman prays, alternating between English and Spanish.
“This is a fully integrated church,” Father Susman says.
It might also be a glimpse at the future.
The Hispanic influx into Hazleton, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton is filling neighborhoods where the population had been projected to slide. The Hispanic community is becoming a significant portion of these cities. More and more Hispanics are learning English. The Hispanic and non-Hispanic communities are beginning to mix in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s churches and schools.
Here to stay
Monsignor Joseph Kelly said it would be hard to find a Hispanic moving to the area who doesn’t already have family or friends here. The family reunification will stabilize the community, says Monsignor Michael Delaney, who recently moved to Scranton after 11 years at Hazleton’s St. Gabriel church.
Newly arrived Hispanics are not coming as migrant workers. They’re here to stay.
“Vinimos para hacer patria aca,” a man told Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty at a small meeting in the Nativity Church chapel. “We came to make a homeland here.”
“This is their home,” said Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta.
“They’re part of the community.”
Mr. Barletta estimates more than 25 percent of the city is Hispanic. The mayor thinks Hazleton’s population has recovered to nearly 30,000.
Language often keeps that part of the population from mingling with the rest, he said.
It isn’t the only barrier, though.
Education and poverty often play a bigger factor than ethnicity in slowing integration. English ability also often follows education level.
Most of the recent immigrants received little education in their home countries. Just 21 percent of 35-year-old Mexicans have high school diplomas, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international trade group.
“It’s the people without education that emigrate,” said Luis Albino, a chaplain at Grace Fellowship in Wilkes-Barre, who also ministers to Hispanics in jail.
Mr. Barletta hopes with time Hazleton’s Hispanic and non-Hispanic residents will blend into one community.
“Hopefully, the community will be able to mingle and learn from this new culture,” the grandson of Italian immigrants says.
For governments, addressing Hispanic needs is complicated because it’s difficult to contact the residents.
Hispanics in Hazleton and Scranton are making strides in creating an organized presence. Hispanic leaders told Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty that they’re starting an organization that will eventually serve as a contact point to reach the Hispanic community.
Integrar. Integrate. The word came up several times in the July meeting with Mr. Doherty.
After Mass at Nativity, Ofelia Cardeza told the congregation about the conversation with the mayor. She talked about the mayor’s plan to turn Cedar Avenue into a business district anchored by Hispanic involvement.
Hispanics told the mayor they want to be involved, to be invited along on community clean-up days.
“We’re almost 13,000 Latinos in this part of Lackawanna,” Ms. Cardeza said. “We want to integrate ourselves.”
Still growing
At Spanish-language Masses, there are young children everywhere.
Beginning in 2002, there’s been a “baby boom,” said Alejandra Marroquin, who works in the Latin-American Pastoral Office at Nativity Church in Scranton.
Sister Jacquelin, I.H.M., who works with Ms. Marroquin, spends much of her time translating at medical appointments for pregnant Hispanic women.
The Hispanic population is moving here, but it is also increasing from within. The birth rate for Hispanic immigrants is 3.1 children per woman, compared with a national average of 2.1, according to the Population Resource Center. In the U.S., the average age for Mexicans is just 24 years old — 10 years below the national average.
Almost all the American-born children are bilingual. Even if their parents don’t speak English, the children are learning it at school. Those who aren’t in school yet are learning English from older siblings, or by watching television.
Already, some second-generation Hispanics are losing the Spanish language.
“Some of them know how to speak (Spanish), but they don’t write it or read it,” Ms. Marroquin said. She moved to the United States in 1993 from Guatemala City and speaks both languages fluently.
Other Hispanics make the same observations. While children speak Spanish at home with their parents, English is often their stronger language.
Still, Northeastern Pennsylvania will probably hold Spanish-language Masses and English as second language classes for decades to come.
During the next five years the Hispanic population will double, predicts Msg. Kelly, director of Catholic Social Services in the diocese. Higher birth rates will account for only part of the Hispanic community’s growth over the next generation.
“I’m watching it from baptisms,” Msg. Kelly said. “I’m watching it from quinceañeras.”
Births will account for just a part of the area’s Hispanic growth. Paul Oreck, president of El Mensajero, thinks the immigration will continue unless there is a major change in immigration policy. If a planned railroad from New York to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton is completed, Oreck thinks 20,000-30,000 more Hispanics will arrive in a few years.
New generation
For now, the majority of Hispanics, especially the most-recent immigrants are working in manufacturing and service jobs. Their bosses are often white.
But Luis Albino, the chaplain at Grace Fellowship in Wilkes-Barre, hopes the second generation of Hispanics in the area will live on equal footing with others.
He sees a better chance for Hispanic kids in Wilkes-Barre than in New York or New Jersey. There, he says, many Hispanics never need to learn English well, and they fall behind in school.
“I look at that little girl, and I see her in 20 years,” he said, watching children play recently at a picnic. Mr. Albino hopes he’ll see a young woman with the chance to be a professional. He hopes she lives on an equal plane with the rest of the community, and isn’t separated by language or race.
Hispanic children will only advance, Mr. Albino says, to the extent their parents emphasize education.
“It still hasn’t changed,” the Puerto Rican chaplain said of most Hispanics educational level. “It’s very early.”
Those who come, come looking for a better life for their children. It’s a risky, often illegal journey that separates them from all they knew. But they follow dreams of economic opportunity and lives richer than they could achieve in their own countries.
Maybe this influx, with its different language, food and culture isn’t so unfamiliar after all.
Mr. Barletta said Hazleton’s Hispanic community is starting to blend, just like his ancestors did. The grandson of Italian immigrants is now Hazleton’s mayor.
There are challenges. Growth stresses school districts’ budgets. ESL classes are expensive. Governments are pressured to change to meet new needs. Both the governments and the immigrants changed in the past.
The waves from other nations that have arrived to this valley have created it. The Welsh, Irish, Italian, Poles and Slovaks came and created their own communities. They spoke their own languages while they worked in the mines.
Conflicts flared between those who were already here and those who were arriving.
“Sometimes, I think we don’t learn well from history,” Mr. Barletta said. “And we should.”
Then the immigrants’ children learned English. Many worked themselves into better jobs, and found the opportunity their parents came to the valley looking for. They became Americans.
Also, I take offense to them trying to justify what is occuring today by pointing back to when my fathers came over. Firstly, all of them emigrated within the context of the law at the time. Secondly, when they got here there was no nanny state looking after them, giving away taxpayers' dollars at the drop of a hat; and finally, sure they spoke their native tongue amongst themselves but they never once expected the government to use both English and Polish and they certainly didn't expect anyone else to cater to them... that's really the heart of the matter, by catering to and coddling these immigrants today, we are further allowing the balkanization of the United States tomorrow.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
BTTT
Uhhhhhhhhh, I'm not sure that's a good sentence. I'm sensing Liberal elitism.
Does anyone wish to assure the American public there are no Mexican military invading our nation, by hiding behind groups of regular Mexicans?
Does anyone wish to assure the American public there are no Mexican drug runners invading our nation, by hiding behind groups of regular Mexicans?
Does anyone wish to assure the American public there are no Mexican murders, etc. invading our nation, by hiding behind groups of regular Mexicans?
This situation is a nation crisis, and national security is at stake. To see otherwise is folly, if we are at war.
Are we at War?
I live near Hazleton. This story left out a few items such as the increase in violent crime in Hazelton which led to a new police chief being installed last week and the mayor trying to get the hispanic community to identify the drug dealers living in the commumity. This was once a nice town but is now a mess.
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
That's for sure. The new immigrants have got it easy thanks to the efforts of those who came before. There is no comparison.
Eventually we got the hint and got out of there, but it was both frightening and sad to see this happen in your home, in a place where you grew up feeling perfectly safe.
I know what you mean. I live right across the river from Wilkes-Barre and never go into town. The residents there have to walk the streets to protest the lack of police presence. The police response was they could only respond to the most serious crimes and could not patrol neighborhoods. Between the illegal immigrants and section 8 housing this whole area is going downhill.
BTW: I am against illegal immigration and am pissed off that Bush has not done much to control it. I do think, however, that you misread alot of the cultural signs as being those of hostility. When you are of another ethnic group and you come into an ethnic community, people will think you are "exotic." I NEVER encountered hostility in all of my years going through Arab/Puerto Rican/Indian/Pakistani/Mexican, etc. communities, just curiosity more than anything else. Most ethnic communities may feel uncomfortable with outsiders, but it doesn't mean that they "hate" you.
Most people don't care and simply either move to a new community and on to other issues. Hell, in places like New York City (where I'm from) nobody gives a sh-t period except for some old farts in the outer boroughs who will be dead soon anyway.
No.
We are under invasion.
War comes when we fight back.
Exactly right. Mexicans come in all colors. This is a piece of condescending, liberal elitism, throwing softballs at a serious problem and portraying the author as our philosopher and guide.
Scranton and Wilkes-Barre have been losing population for some time. Housing is cheap relative to New York and North Jersey. Many American-born blacks and Puerto Ricans know how to at least take a bus down I-80 or I-70, so you have an influx of folks who have been priced out of the New York area, many (if not most) of whom are people of color. The immigrants from Mexico have come to take advantage of the construction boom in western New Jersey/NE Pennsylvania.
BTW: The only true "caucasians" are Armenians and Georgians.
Your neighborhood ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.