Oregon Public Broadcasting

The debate over immigration in America may be heated, but it's not always rooted in hard data.

This month, census workers are documenting the nation's latest demographics. That includes a statistical portrait of America's Hispanic population.

But a brace of recent studies about Latinos in the Northwest already provides some clues. Jacob Lewin looked into what we know about the region's fastest-growing ethnic group.

This is a number that even surprises some Latinos:  A recent census sampling shows that 60 percent of self-identified Hispanics around the Northwest were born in the United States. That includes children of immigrants.

It also includes people like Roberto Jimenez.

Roberto Jimenez: "My family has been in Oregon for 50 years.  On both sides of my parents' families, they've been in this country, well, what's now this country, for 400 years meaning the border moved and we didn't."

Jimenez is executive director of a program that provides affordable housing for farm workers in Woodburn, Oregon.  It's a good job and one that fits into another fact that might be surprising: In Portland and Seattle, a solid majority of those U.S. born Latinos work in white-collar jobs.

That's according to a new study of major metro areas by the Fiscal Policy Institute. Only about 40 percent in and around the cities are blue-collar workers.

Michael Dale directs the Northwest Workers Justice Project.

Michael Dale: "There have been Latinos in Oregon from almost the very beginning.  We call Port Angeles Port Angeles, but it's really Puerto Angeles. Many of the cattle companies hired vaqueros who came from Mexico or California."

The latest census sampling of Hispanics in the Northwest is from two years ago. It estimates the number of Latinos in the Northwest at nearly 1.3 million.

That's triple the number from 20 years ago.

Of the immigrants, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates 60 percent are unauthorized to be here. That's about 300,000 people.

Many of the newcomers, authorized and not, have fashioned a society here according to David Smith, general sales manager for Portland's Univisión.

David Smith: "The Latinos in the United States are retaining their language and their culture to a much higher degree than any previous immigrant group, and I think there are a lot of reasons for that.  One is the proximity to Mexico and Central America. The Internet and phone cards allow you to stay in touch with people back home. Media availability also plays a part in keeping the language and the culture alive."

Smith says many second generation Latinos come here for the same reason as non-Latinos...the quality of life for themselves and their kids.

And Latinos do have more kids. New figures from the Oregon Department of Education show nearly 20 percent of K-12 kids are Hispanic while 11-percent of the population is.

That indicates a higher birth rate, although that is partly due to the fact that there are proportionately more Latino women of child-bearing age. The birth rate does go down amongst second-generation Latinos. 

Michael Dale predicts that trend will continue. Looking at his own extended family of Latinos, he thinks assimilation will be no different from other immigrant groups.

Michael Dale: "First generation struggles with English as most of us do who try to learn a foreign language as an adult and have the closest family and friendship affiliations to the old country. Second generation are fluent in both and tend to have associations in both.  By the time you get to the third generation I find the grand children of immigrants don't like chili and they hate Mexican music and they're pretty standard American teenagers."

That plays out in this Northeast Portland cafe and dozens of other spots around the region.

Spanish conversation groups, where second generation Hispanics stay in touch with their roots. But you'll also find a cook from Veracruz, a software engineer from Uruguay, a taxi-driver-turned-interpreter from Chihuahua, and Hilton Diaz Camilo.

He's a chemist at a local high tech plant who arrived from Bolivia nine years ago. His kids speak no Spanish. After a recent morning conversation group, Diaz-Camilo took his kids then drove them in his late-model hybrid to a well-kept home in Southeast Portland.

Sounds a little like the American dream.

Hilton Diaz Camilo: "Yeah, it is. It is. You know I try to do the best for the family and for the kids and I think I have the tendency to always have a better life."

And more Latinos will pursue the American dream. 

That's the prediction from the Population Research Center at Portland State University. The latest estimates peg the region's Hispanic population at 11-percent. 

PSU predicts that the census numbers being collected right now will show that number increasing.