Article from the Hamilton Journal News 8/16/2006

Butler sees largest growth as region's Hispanic population soars

By Ken McCall and Lisa A. Bernard

Staff Writers

The Hispanic population in southwest Ohio is growing faster than the rest of the state and even the nation — and Butler County has witnessed the largest population growth in the region.

That’s what recently released Census Bureau estimates show.

Hispanics account for 14.4 percent of the population nationally and 1.5 percent in Ohio. But fueled by increases in Warren, Butler and Hamilton counties, the numbers are creeping up. The Census estimates that the Hispanic population has increased by 19 percent in Ohio and 20 percent nationally since 2000. In southwest Ohio, the growth is at 34 percent.

Butler County saw the largest population growth in the region, adding almost 2,700 Hispanics, or 56 percent, to reach a total of about 7,500.

Butler County officials have launched several initiatives aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. County Commissioner Michael Fox said he believes the Census Bureau “undercounts” the local immigrant population, but feels the growth rates “underscore the urgent need” to address the nation’s immigration policies.

“There are folks that are not supposed to be here and don’t like to be counted,” he said. “We are very grateful and want to welcome the legal immigrants who are here. But every day that Congress doesn’t act, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 illegal immigrants are coming into this country.”

Fox is a supporter of the Fix It Now campaign, a coalition created to lobby Congress to pass comprehensive legislation that combines border security and enforcement with a guest worker program and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

“Every community has been adversely affected by the growth in the illegal immigrant population,” Fox said. “If it is difficult for Congress to deal with the problems now, it will be virtually impossible to deal with them as time goes on.”

The influx comes as the population of white non-Hispanics is falling in the state and the eight-county southwest Ohio region. The new estimates show the number of white non-Hispanics fell by close to 36,000 in the state and by about 7,600 in the region during the five years ending July 2005. Whites still account for 85 percent of the state population and 81 percent of the region.

Larry Sink, a statistician with the Census Bureau’s population estimates program, said the bureau changed the way it estimates Hispanics between censuses in 2001 to provide more accurate numbers.

“There is no guarantee that we are getting all the undocumented workers with this,” Sink said, “but it certainly looks like we’re getting more than we were before.”

Many groups argue that Census data often underestimates immigrant populations, in part because of the reluctance of undocumented immigrants to respond to questionnaires.

For that reason and others, researchers at Bear Stearns Asset Management Inc., one of the world’s leading investment banking houses, said in a 2005 report that there is “significant evidence that the census estimates of undocumented immigrants may be capturing as little as half the total undocumented population.”

The researchers pointed to increases in school enrollments, foreign remittances, border crossings and housing permits as sources of data that provide evidence that growth in the immigrant population is much greater than the Census Bureau statistics.