Posted on 09/18/2003 9:31:31 AM PDT by citizen
The Hispanic population grew faster in Georgia than in any state in the nation from 2000 to 2002, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures released today.
Lured by jobs and relatives, a net gain of about 102 Hispanics a day came to Georgia in the last two years from Latin America, mainly Mexico, and from states with much larger Hispanic populations, such as California, Texas and Illinois.
Georgia's Hispanic community grew 17 percent, to about 516,500, the latest evidence of profound transformation of a state long cast in black and white.
The pattern repeated itself around the Southeast, in places with little sustained history of Hispanic settlement. The eight states with the fastest growing Hispanic populations included North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama.
The analysis also shows that metro Atlanta experienced the most rapid Hispanic growth rate among the nation's 20 most populous metro areas. The census says rural Dawson County, about 60 miles north of downtown Atlanta, had the most dramatic increase in Hispanic population -- 59 percent growth -- though only 2 percent of people in Dawson County are Hispanic.
Gwinnett County has the highest concentration of Hispanics -- 13 percent -- of the 28 counties that meet the federal definition of metro Atlanta.
About 6 percent of Georgians and 7.5 percent of metro Atlantans are Hispanic.
It is the promise of work that attracts people such as Emma Paz, a young Honduran who cleans rooms for $8.30 an hour at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel in downtown Atlanta. She left her native Honduras in 1991 and joined siblings in Los Angeles, where she found a factory job sewing clothes.
Her pay hinged on production, she said, and averaged a paltry $3 an hour. So she wasted no time after a friend told her about plentiful jobs in Georgia.
"In California, there were no good jobs," she said in Spanish on Wednesday afternoon. "There are more jobs here."
Open job market
Some industries to which Hispanics gravitate have openings despite an economic slowdown, said Stephanie Bohon, a University of Georgia sociology professor.
She attributed some growth in the Hispanic population to the arrival of men in search of jobs, but also pointed to a growing number of women and children. Many young men from Latin America who have worked here for several years want relatives to join them.
"Now they can afford to bring their wives and children," she said.
When Paz came to Atlanta in 1996, half the housekeepers at the Renaissance hotel were Hispanic and half were black. Now 95 percent speak Spanish as their native tongue.
They push gray plastic carts through hotel corridors to deliver bottles of shampoo and conditioner, rolls of toilet paper, white shower caps and boxes of facial and bath soap. They vacuum, make beds and clean bathrooms.
Francis Antunez knows the routine well. She started cleaning rooms at the Renaissance about the same time as Paz. Now she manages a housekeeping staff of 70 workers. One difference between her and most of the housekeepers, she said, is that she speaks fluent English. Her parents brought her from Mexico to Chicago at age 4.
She said most housekeepers in her hotel know English terms like "good morning" and "shaving cream," but lack the command of the language that helped her move from a job paying $6 an hour to a position that pays $40,000 a year.
Most of the housekeepers she hires were born in Mexico, El Salvador or Honduras. About half came directly to Atlanta from those countries, she said. Others came from elsewhere in the United States.
All are keenly aware of an economic reality articulated by Maricela Gutierrez, a housekeeper who followed a brother and sister from Acapulco, Mexico, to metro Atlanta in 1997.
"What you can earn in one week there is what you earn here in two days," she said in a hallway on the 23rd floor of the hotel.
UGA's Bohon and a colleague, housing and consumer economics professor Jorge Atiles, interviewed more than 300 Latinos and social-service providers in Georgia for a study published last year. They suggested the rapid demographic changes and economic recession may exacerbate social tension between native-born Americans and their Spanish-speaking neighbors.
"When the economy goes bad, tension goes up," Atiles said.
Bohon said her research showed that the people most likely to have concerns about the Hispanic influx were older residents outside metro Atlanta. They tended to be native-born Georgians or people who had lived in the state for many years.
Illegal immigrant issue
One common complaint is that many Hispanics in Georgia are illegal immigrants. No one knows the precise number, but Bohon said she believes people tend to exaggerate the illegal immigrant population.
Immigration authorities said this year that 228,000 illegal immigrants live in Georgia, though it is not known how many are from Latin America as opposed to other regions. But national estimates are that 76 percent of all illegal immigrants are Hispanic.
Growth of the state's Hispanic population has enormous implications for just about every major institution in the state.
A growing number of businesses recognize an emerging and powerful consumer market: A recent UGA study said Hispanic buying power in Georgia soared from $1.3 billion in 1990 to $10.2 billion this year.
Local governments spend money to hire translators and interpreters to work in courts, schools and police departments. Other institutions lack the funds to do that, Atiles said.
Delivery room indicator
One of the most telling signs of the future: Spanish-speaking nurses are suddenly in demand in hospital obstetrics wards. A growing number of babies born in Georgia are Hispanic boys and girls who are likely to come of age in a different Georgia.
"The Latino population is here to stay," Bohon said, "and it's going to get larger."
How can that be when most of them get their drivers licences in North Carolina?
This seems to be mostly happening in and around Atlanta. And there are three major difference in you comparison.
First, we threw out a good chunk of our lunatics in the State government in our last election.
Second, we have guns.
Third, we are not afraid to use them.
Because politicians DON'T know the Constitution, and the sheeple have been educated brainwashed - any outcry against illegals is met with shouts of "RACIST!"
Because we have everything free here. Sure these people can take jobs for $6 an hour and have lots of babies --- it's free hospitalizations, free maternity care, free food with WIC and food stamps, free public schools.
The taxpayers pay their real living costs, the $6/hour is for sending back to Mexico and a few shopping trips to Walmart. Watch the tax rates climb to sky high.
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