Why do Latinos come to North Carolina?

The following story ran in Thursday's Herald. I have added a few facts and figures that, because of space constraints, were edited out.
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Hispanics in North Carolina
- In a state with one of the fastest growing Latino populations in the country, Lee County alone has seen a dramatic increase in that segment in the last three decades. In the 1980 census, Lee County had 300 Latino residents, or about .82 percent of its total population of 36,718. By 1990, there were 800 Latinos in Lee County, or about 1.9 percent of the 41,374 residents. And in 2000, the county had 5,715 Latino residents, 11 percent of the total population of 49,040.
- Don Kovasckitz of Lee County Strategic Services estimates that as of Wednesday, there were 12,163 Latinos in Lee County, or about 20 percent of the total population. His estimates come from rolls in the Lee County public school system and other sources, and includes both legal and undocumented residents.
- According to the U.S. Census, North Carolina had the fastest growing population of Hispanics in the U.S. during the 1990s — 394 percent — representing over 300,000 new residents. By 2006, the percentage of the state's population that defined themselves as Hispanic had grown to 6.4 percent, or around 566,000 residents.
- More than half of these new residents live along the state's urban crescent, the stretch from Charlotte to Raleigh along the Interstate 85 corridor, or around the state's major military bases such as Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune — areas that have experienced much of the state' employment growth in the past decade.
- The median age of Latinos in the state is around 25 years old, more than 10 years younger than that of the non-Hispanic residents.
- The number of Latino births in North Carolina increased seven-fold from 1990 to 2000, and more than 12 percent of the state's Hispanic population is under the age of five, more than double that of the non-Hispanic population.

By JONATHAN OWENS
owens@sanfordherald.com

SANFORD — There’s a rumor that somewhere along the U.S.-Mexican border stands a sign that points illegal immigrants directly to North Carolina.
Even if it’s not true, today’s Mexican immigrants don’t need directions to know where to go once they reach the United States. Simply put, many go where they can find work, and for several decades now that has been the Southeast — North Carolina in particular.
In recent decades, there has been a noticeable shift in Latino immigration patterns from border states such as California and Texas toward the southern part of the country, where low-skilled jobs in construction and agriculture are plentiful and promise immigrants a prosperous life unimaginable in their home countries.
Though Latino immigration to the Tar Heel State has origins in the 1970s and 1980s, the current trend saw its roots in the 1990s. The reasons for this influx are varied, but most follow the trend of the state’s overall economic growth.
Nolo Martinez, who was appointed by both Gov. Jim Hunt and Gov. Mike Easley to head up the state’s bureau of Hispanic Affairs, said Wednesday that “family reunification and economic opportunities are the most important reasons why Hispanics come to this state.”
Further, he said, it is somewhat of a cycle, wherein Latinos find jobs, then recruit other Latinos to work for that employer, which results in more and more immigration to the state.
“Higher demands from employers to expand operations required more workers doing heavy labor under difficult conditions at low pay,” he said. “Latinos are great recruiters of additional labor force. They help the bottom line of business in expansion. Good, low-pay workers that can also support each other.”

Recruiting immigrants
The Hispanic Liaison of Chatham County has been around for 20 years, and Director Iliana Dubester has witnessed the population boom firsthand in Siler City, which is about 40 percent Latino now.
She said Latinos are coming here first and foremost for jobs.
“This is not a traditional immigration state like Texas or California,” Dubester said. “Much like the rest of the Southeast and the heartland, Latinos are coming here for work. They wouldn’t have come here if there weren’t jobs, if there weren’t open doors.”
Dubester, who is Brazilian, said many Latinos have found out about North Carolina through active recruitment in Mexico. She said people are actively recruiting skilled and unskilled workers south of the border, promising them better pay and bonuses for people who bring more people with them.
She adds that despite the recruitment, illegal immigrants aren’t “taking jobs away” from Americans.
“To say they’re taking jobs away, then to look at our unemployment figures, it doesn’t match,” she said.
Dubester said she doesn’t promote illegal immigration, but she doesn’t approve of the way illegal immigrants are treated once they’re working in the U.S.
“There’s been a failure of congress to pass immigration reform,” she said. “Being undocumented is much more risky than it used to be. In order to deport the 12 million people who are in this country illegally, though, you’d have to deport 1,000 people a day for the next 30 years. Instead, we’re at a point where we’re driving the underprivileged down even further. If people here are fearful of contact with police departments, then crime goes unreported. People aren’t cooperating.
“This is happening all over the state. We’re not wanted, we’re hated and we’re hunted here,” she added. “The state is sending a mixed message — we’ll give you work, but you have to live in the shadows.”

Higher birth rates
Another reason for the increase in Latinos in North Carolina can also be attributed to high birth rates. According to the CDC, North Carolina had the highest fertility rates in the nation for Mexican mothers (the largest segment of Latino immigrants) in 2000, with 181 births per 1,000 Mexican women ages 15 to 44 in this state, amounting to about 16,000 births.
Carolyn Spivey, executive director of the Coalition for Families in Lee County, a non-profit that deals directly with teen pregnancy prevention, said the instances of Latino teen pregnancy is significantly higher than that of non-Latinos. She attributes that fact more to cultural differences than anything else, including an aversion to birth control methods, although she could not say whether there was a religious basis for it.
“Typically, Latinos get married and have children at a much younger age in their native countries,” she said. “It is more accepted not to graduate high school.”
She said with acculturation, that rate usually slows. First generation immigrants, she said, are much more likely to get pregnant earlier than those whose families have been in the country for more than one generation.
Lee County Director of Public Health Mike Hanes agreed with that assessment.
“There is much more cultural influence to start a family early,” he said. “It’s not out of the norm for early pregnancies to happen here, because they bring their culture here.”

Economics drive immigration
Hanes said, though, that immigration into the area is a much larger reason for the population boom than birth rates. He pointed to the vast disparity between wages in Mexico and the United States, which is higher that between any other neighboring countries in the world.
“I’d say that economics are the first, second and third reasons for the Hispanic population increase,” he said.
Martinez said he doesn’t see an end in sight to the stream of immigrants coming to this state to find work and a better life. As long as the state grows, its Latino population will likely grow as well.
“Immigration is America,” Martinez said. “North Carolina needs to continue to invest on immigration and less on isolation. You can outsource high-tech jobs, but workers from India cannot mow your lawn or do other low-skill work that we Americans choose not to do. “