The change is happening in Stanwood, Monroe and other small cities in Snohomish County.
Gateways to the county’s farmland, these cities have become home to more Hispanic immigrants than ever before. It’s part of a nationwide trend tracing the fastest-growing Hispanic communities to the country’s most rural areas.
Hispanics are moving to rural areas faster than they once did, and are also settling down in states that border Canada, instead of Mexico, according to a report released Wednesday by the Carsey Institute, a New Hampshire-based research group.
The new wave of Hispanics in rural Washington is more likely to include people who speak English better than those who came before them, according to the study. They are younger (30 percent are below age 15) and many have high school diplomas.
About a quarter of all residents in rural Hispanic communities live in poverty, but wherever they go, money follows as they spend their wages in the community.
The economic impact is the first sign of change a non-Hispanic is likely to see, said Elizabeth Ramirez, director of Familias Unidas, a social services agency in Everett.
“There has been an increase of Latinos opening their own businesses,” she said. “If you look around, you’ll see restaurants, auto shops, businesses offering cleaning, roofing, landscaping. It’s bringing an increase to the local economy.”
Between 2000 and 2006 in Washington, the Hispanic community grew by 31.4 percent, said report author Rogelio Saenz, about four times faster than the overall state population growth of 8.5 percent.
Just over 80,000 Hispanics live in rural areas, according to the report. That’s about 14 percent of the total Hispanic population, which, in Saenz’s report, means anyone of Latin American origin.
In Snohomish County, Hispanics are estimated to number about 43,700 — 6.5 percent of the total county population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Hispanic population here now is 1.5 times larger than it was seven years ago, state Office of Financial Management figures show.
The Carsey Institute did not study whether those numbers include illegal immigrants, Saenz said.
The states with the largest number of Hispanics living in rural areas are Texas, New Mexico, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and California. Those states each have more than 100,000 Hispanics living outside metropolitan areas.
But states in the north are quickly gaining on southern states. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Illinois and Georgia all have more than 50,000 Hispanics living outside metro areas.
A shift in the meatpacking industry has caused some of the growth in northern states, Saenz said.
“Jobs were moving from metropolitan areas and resettling in rural communities,” he said. “There has been a lot of recruitment of workers, particularly Hispanics, and particularly Mexicans, to come into these communities to work.”
In the Pacific Northwest, growth has been bolstered by agriculture, construction and service jobs, Saenz said.
More Hispanic immigrants are expected to move to Washington, and many of those will be young, growing families, he said.
Saenz’s report shows that more rural Hispanic women — 9.2 percent — gave birth than rural women of other ethnicities, including white women (5.5 percent) and black women (6.3 percent).
Already, businesses and services in Snohomish County are responding to the growth.
At Familias Unidas, the number of English classes has grown from one to six in recent years, Ramirez said. Last year, 450 students were enrolled, she said.
More Hispanic students than ever before are applying to the University of Washington, said Karl Smith, director of recruiting for the Office of Minority Affairs.
The school has already received 1,200 applications from Hispanic students for this fall. Smith said that number is growing because the school now has a Spanish-speaking staff to recruit Hispanic students.
Spanish-language Mass at St. Mary’s of the Valley Church in Monroe can attract more than 600 worshippers, Father Michael O’Brien said. The congregation is smaller than it once was, but not because the community is shrinking, he said. Instead, more churches are responding to the need of the growing community by offering Spanish services.
“They were coming from as far away as Lynnwood when I came here about eight and a half years ago, but now many people are able to attend services in Mountlake Terrace, Mill Creek, Bothell and in Everett,” he said. “I’m not sure how many there were in the first place, but there definitely has been a growth.”
Even as more Hispanics learn to speak English and their children are raised in an English-speaking society, it’s unlikely they’ll leave the Spanish Mass for an English service, O’Brien said.
“For worship, they prefer to worship in their own native language,” he said.
Area television and radio stations geared toward Spanish speakers also are targeting Hispanics in Snohomish County.
The Hispanic community provides a strong economic backbone, regardless of what’s happening in the overall region, said Danilo Araujo of Azteca America 45, a Spanish-language television station based in Redmond.
The community’s buying power in Seattle alone is roughly $231 million annually, he said.
Araujo is confident that Spanish television is insulated against English competition.
“Even if we learn to speak, write and read in English, we will always be more confident receiving news in our own language,” he said.
Even for those comfortable in English, Spanish will continue to be a language of choice, said Lloyd Low, who works for UniVision, a Spanish-language television station based in Seattle.
“I live my life in English,” he said. “But I enjoy my life in Spanish.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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