"Our community, the Latino community, is an essential force for the development of this region. Excluding it would be to suffocate the different industries that nourish the economic activity in the Bluegrass.
Although the numbers of Latino immigrants in the state of Kentucky are not totally exact, they range between 26,000 and 65,000, citing a variety of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau. The Lexington Herald Leader recently reported a 66 percent increase on the Hispanic population of Fayette County; from 8,615 to 14,375 since the year 2000 to 2006.
According to the Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center, the Latino community only represents slightly more than 2 percent of the total population.
The myth of a crisis provoked by the flow of immigrants in the area is not supported by any statistic, argument or existing survey. That argument unfortunately relies on the dark cave of racial discrimination and ethnocentrism.
A 2006 study by the Pew Hispanic Center found, "Rapid increases in the foreign-born population at the state level are not associated with negative effects on the employment of native-born workers." The Pew Study concluded that neither the size of the foreign-born workforce nor its relative youth and low levels of education showed to have a "bearing on the employment outcomes of native-born workers of similar schooling and age."
According to a research paper presented by The Kentucky Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and The Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice in February 2007, Kentucky was one state where rapid growth in the foreign-born population was paired with employment rates lower than the national average, "even though, when studied county-by-county over the most significant period in the Pew study (2000-2004), Kentucky shows the same trend as the national Pew study, only more strongly."
The paper concludes that Kentucky counties that have received the most immigrants (whether measured in absolute number or in percentages) tend to have stronger growth in wages and lower unemployment than counties without significant immigration. This does not prove that wages are immune from an influx of immigrant workers, but it does demonstrate that those counties in Kentucky with a significant immigrant influx are also the counties that prospered more over the same period.
Let's not forget that between 1997 and 2002, Latino-owned business in Kentucky grew by 41 percent, and their receipts grew by 172 percent as compared with the state average of 16 percent in growth of receipts.
Latinos are not a community in the shadows. We are an integral part of the social fabric of this country and this city.
Today undocumented immigrants continue to pay much into Social Security that they will never collect. Immigrants bolster Social Security by about seven billion dollars a year. The amount of Social Security benefits that will not be claimed is now estimated at $600 billion. (New York Times, April 6, 2005).
Every day, Latinos construct the future with sweat and decency — shoulder to shoulder, sharing the same parks, the same schools and jobs. The immigrant population living in Kentucky lives here to work and to progress.
That statement is supported by data showing that Latinos in the Bluegrass also maintain a national trend to have substantially lower institutionalization (incarceration) than natives, according to a study prepared for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in 2005.
That report concluded that in 2000, male young adult immigrants were institutionalized at one-fifth the rate of comparable native-born Americans. In fact, when predicting the institutionalization rate for immigrants based on the experiences of natives, the study found that the observed rate is one-tenth of the predicted one.
In Kentucky, Latinos constitute over two percent of the Kentucky population, while they account for only 1.1 percent of Kentucky's prison population.
Rather than a burden or crisis as it has been wrongfully described for much of the media at the national level, the influx of immigrants to the Bluegrass has been an open opportunity for economic development.
Progress, development and civil society are strengthened by inclusion, participation and the effort that citizens invest in that social project known as community.
To deny the investment and the contributions of the Latino and immigrant population to the commonwealth, limiting its integration and opportunities for education, training, retraining and full participation in the civil life of our society, will only damage the existing industries and the extensive network of labor, cultural and socio-economical relations that provide their growth.
The denial of rights for full participation and integration based on premises taken out of context and that do not accurately reflect historic conditions or current economics is a clear attack on the most basic fundamentals of civil society, meaning social harmony, cooperation and mutual respect. And these elements under attack are all essential in building and strengthening healthy communities.
Andrès Cruz is ditor of La Voz.