The Changing Geography of U.S. Hispanics from 1990–2006: A Shift to the South and Midwest

Abstract

Between 1990 and 2000 the U.S. Hispanic population increased by 14 million, which is the largest decadal population rise in United States history. This increase was not spread evenly throughout the United States, nor was it isolated to locations that already had large Hispanic populations. On the contrary, areas that previously had a relatively small Hispanic population experienced large percentage increases. In this article the regional variability in Hispanic population growth is explored, along with an emphasis on the economic pull factors driving those demographic changes. This analysis illustrates how restructuring in the meatpacking industry, and the associated economic impacts, have created a dependence on a low wage, illegal labor force that has shaped the recent demographic trend in the South and Midwest.

Key Words:

• Hispanics
• immigration
• assimilation
• economic restructuring
• gateway communities

Introduction

From 1850 to 1990 the U.S. Hispanic population grew from 100,000 to approximately 22 million, whereas from 1990 to 2000 the U.S. Hispanic population grew by 14 million. In 2002 Hispanics overtook African Americans as the largest minority population in the United States. In 2006 the Census Bureau estimated 43 million Hispanics in the United States; more than half the current Hispanic population of the United States arrived since 1990, either from immigration or birth.

In this article we analyze the changing distribution of Hispanics from 1990 to 2000 through a series of regional maps. Little attention will be devoted to traditional Hispanic regions such as South Florida, the Northeast, Chicago-land, or the Southwest. ¹

Our maps focus on counties that have a Hispanic population of at least 5 percent. The 5 percent level is an important political and social threshold because a 1975 Voting Rights Act amendment states that jurisdictions must provide bilingual ballots and bilingual election materials when 5 percent of its voting age population belongs to a single-language minority (Kusnet 1992, 15). Five percent is also the threshold previously used to delimit Mex-America (Nostrand 1970; Haverluk 1997). Our analysis reveals that the most significant change in Hispanic population growth occurred in the South and Midwest. These changes are driven by a few key economic sectors. In particular, restructuring in the meat processing industry has created a system of labor dependence that helps to explain the recent demographic changes in the South.

Definition of Terms and Methods

The United States is the only country in the world with a “Hispanic” population. The term “Hispanic” comes from the Latin word for Iberia, “Hispania.” Widespread use of the term began in the late 1970s when the U.S. Census Bureau adopted it to describe all persons in the United States who are descendant from Spain or from a Spanish-speaking country of the New World (Garcia 1996, 197). The Census Bureau defines Hispanics as persons who “indicated their origin was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or some other Hispanic origin.” ² This definition of Hispanic is based more on history and geography than ethnicity because Hispanics may be of any race—African, Asian, European, or Native American—as long as they can trace their ancestry to Spain or one of Spain's colonies. The most numerous Hispanics are Mexicans, followed by Puerto Ricans and “Other” Hispanics. Other Hispanics include Dominicans, Spaniards, Central and South Americans, and native Hispanics such as Tejanos, Hispanos, and Chicanos. Recently, the term “Hispanic” has been losing ground to “Latino.” Latino originated from within the social group it describes and is therefore considered a more appropriate term, yet Latino does not work well in Europe where the terms Hispanique or Hispanico are used (the term “Latin” has a completely different meaning in Europe). We use Latino and Hispanic interchangeably. The term Anglo-American, or simply Anglo, is commonly used to describe non-Hispanic whites (Arreola 2004, 2).

U.S. Hispanics 1990 and 2000

In 1990 not one county in the core southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) had a Hispanic population of at least 5 percent. Figure 1 shows four major regional Hispanic clusters in 1990. By far the largest is the West, the historical homeland of U.S. Hispanics, which is overwhelmingly Mexican. The other clusters include Cubans in South Florida, Puerto Ricans in Megalopolis (Northeast corridor), and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the Midwest.

Figure 1 U.S. Hispanic population by county, 1990.

Figure 2 shows a dramatic change in the distribution of Hispanics from 1990 to 2000. The four traditional regional clusters are less identifiable as Hispanics moved into nontraditional states. In 2000, only seven states in the contiguous United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, and South Dakota—did not have at least one county that was 5 percent Hispanic.

Figure 2 U.S. Hispanic population by county, 2000.

Figure 3 shows those counties that have reached the 5 percent threshold since 1990. The South gained the most with eighty counties, followed by the Midwest with seventy-one, the West with sixty-one, and the Northeast with nineteen. Economic growth in manufacturing and the associated increase in leisure time and amenity-driven tourism has played an important role in these demographic changes. Between 1990 and 2000 Hispanic workers expanded their presence mostly in meat processing, construction, and service industries. More than half of undocumented Hispanic immigrants are currently employed in these industries (Pew Hispanic Center 2005).

Figure 3 Counties that reached the 5 percent threshold of Hispanic population between 1990 and 2000.

Hispanic population growth in four different regions, the West, Midwest, Northeast, and South, is addressed. The greatest emphasis is on the South and Midwest, where Hispanics have moved into new areas that previously had relatively small Hispanic populations.

Regional Trends: The Midwest

In the Midwest, Hispanic settlement expanded along the Arkansas, Minnesota, and Platte River Valleys (Fig. 4). The cluster of Hispanic counties around Chicago expanded west across the state and merged with the Quad cities in Iowa (Bettendorf, Davenport, Moline, and Rock Island) and north to include Milwaukee. There are a variety of employment sectors driving Hispanic population growth in the Midwest. In Chicago and its immediate surroundings, Hispanics continue to fill jobs in the construction and service industries and some meatpacking. For example, it is estimated that nearly half of the people employed in the commercial laundry industry in Chicago are illegal Hispanic immigrants (Levin and Ginsburg 2000). While the largest gains in absolute numbers occurred in urban and metropolitan areas, the largest percentage increases occurred in rural, non-metropolitan areas of the Midwest. High Hispanic growth counties are correlated with meatpacking facilities in cities such as Storm Lake and Denison, Iowa; Sioux City and Grand Island, Nebraska; Garden City and Dodge City, Kansas; McDonald and Sullivan counties Missouri; Beardstown, Illinois; and Frankton, Indiana (Fig. 4). The Hispanic population of Nebraska and Minnesota tripled and that of Kansas and Iowa more than doubled, mostly as a result of the construction of new meat processing plants and their increasing reliance on immigrant labor.

Figure 4 Hispanics in the Midwest, 1990 and 2000.

The Hispanic population in the Midwest nearly doubled to over three million between 1990 and 2000. Another 600,000 Hispanics were added by mid-decade, but if trends continue the increase will be less than 50 percent by 2010 (Table 1). Illinois, (primarily Chicago-land) still has almost half of all Midwestern Hispanics. If the Hispanic population continued to double or even triple every decade, Kansas and Nebraska would be 50 percent Hispanic by 2030. The rate of increase, however, is slowing and projections put the Midwest with eight million Hispanics by 2030. As of 2000, the Midwest region was home to roughly 9 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population (United States Census Bureau 2002).

Table 1 Change in Midwestern Hispanic population, 1990–2005 (United States Census Bureau 2001b; Pew Hispanic Center 2005).

		2000		2005
Hispanic Population	1990 Numbers	Numbers	% Increase	Numbers	% Increase
Illinois	904,446	1,530,262	69	1,807,908	18
Indiana	98,788	214,536	117	273,004	27
Iowa	32,647	82,473	152	102,047	24
Kansas	93,670	188,252	100	218,244	16
Michigan	201,596	323,877	60	378,232	17
Minnesota	53,884	143,382	166	185,244	29
Missouri	61,702	118,592	92	154,744	31
Nebraska	36,969	94,425	155	124,504	31
North Dakota	4,665	7,786	67	11,380	46
Ohio	139,696	217,123	55	253,014	16
South Dakota	5,252	10,903	107	12,311	13
Wisconsin	93,194	192,921	107	230,014	19
Totals	1,726,509	3,124,532	80	3,750,646	20

Regional Trends: The Northeast

In the Northeast, the traditional core cluster of heavily Puerto Rican counties centered on New York City expanded all the way to Boston and Washington D.C. in 2000 (Fig. 5). The demographic composition of New York City's Hispanics also changed. The city's two largest Hispanic groups, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, have been present long enough to create distinct neighborhoods, dominating streetscapes and economic activities. Encroaching upon these established cultural landscapes is a rapidly growing Mexican population, which increased by 235 percent between 1990 and 2000. As suggested by Miyares (2004), this influx may be a result of labor saturation in traditional immigrant hubs, such as California. The location of Hispanics changed little at the county level between 1990 and 2000.

Figure 5 Hispanics in the Northeast, 1990 and 2000.

Hispanic population growth in the Northeast was similar to that of the West with an increase of 50 percent, whereas the Midwest and Southern Hispanic populations more than doubled. The total U.S. Hispanic population also grew by 50 percent from 1990 to 2000. Since 2000 the Northeast has added 700,000 Hispanics, which puts it on a pace to increase by only 25 percent by 2010 (Table 2).

Table 2 Change in Northeastern Hispanic population, 1990–2005 (United States Census Bureau 2001b; Pew Hispanic Center 2005).

		2000		2005
Hispanic Population	1990 Numbers	Numbers	% Increase	Numbers	% Increase
Delaware	15,820	37,277	135	50,007	34
Maine	6,829	9,360	37	12,407	32
Maryland	125,102	227,916	80	311,191	36
Massachusetts	287,549	428,729	49	489,662	14
New Hampshire	11,333	20,489	80	24,248	18
New Jersey	739,861	1,117,191	51	1,312,326	17
New York	2,214,026	2,867,583	30	3,026,286	5
Pennsylvania	232,262	394,088	70	488,144	24
Rhode Island	45,752	90,820	98	114,504	26
Vermont	3,661	4,687	28	4,474	−5%
Totals	3,682,408	5,519,280	50	6,206,109	12

Regional Trends: The West

In 1990, the West already had the largest Hispanic population of any region, which constitutes two-thirds of all U.S. Hispanics. In the West there was still substantial “filling in” between 1990 and 2000 (Fig. 6). In 1990, Utah only had three counties at the 5 percent level, an increase to fourteen counties by 2000. Oregon and Colorado added nine counties each, Idaho eight, and Washington six. California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, traditionally the core of the U.S. Hispanic population, all together added a total of eleven counties at the 5 percent level. There also was a net gain of three counties in the West that are now majority Hispanic, two on the High Plains of Texas (Table 3). At the same time, three New Mexico counties lost their Hispanic majority as Anglos continue to migrate to New Mexico, in part drawn by a lifestyle influenced by “Santa Fe style” that includes adobe architecture, New Mexican food, and Southwestern dress.

Table 3 Change in Western Hispanic population, 1990–2005 (United States Census Bureau 2001b; Pew Hispanic Center 2005).

		2000		2005
Hispanic Population	1990 Numbers	Numbers	% Increase	Numbers	% Increase
California	7,687,938	10,966,556	40	12,534,628	14
Colorado	424,302	735,601	42	895,176	22
Idaho	52,927	101,690	92	135,733	33
Montana	12,174	18,113	49	21,970	22
Nevada	124,419	393,970	216	557,370	41
New Mexico	579,224	765,386	30	827,940	8
Oklahoma	86,160	179,304	108	218,987	22
Oregon	112,707	275,314	144	3 60,000	31
Texas	4,339,905	6,669,666	54	7,882,254	18
Utah	84,597	201,559	138	264,010	31
Washington	214,570	434,747	102	557,370	28
Wyoming	25,751	31,669	23	36,722	16
Totals	14,433,012	21,615,960	50	25,980,276	20

Figure 6 Hispanics in the West, 1990 and 2000.

The economic factors and employment sectors driving these demographic changes vary greatly between the states of the West, as well as within states themselves. Utah and Washington are two examples of places that have experienced large increases in their Hispanic populations. Specifically, the economic impacts in northern Utah and the social impacts in central Washington are discussed to highlight how the changing geography of Hispanics is dealt with by the communities that receive them.

In Washington State, the Hispanic population more than tripled, from 214,570 in 1990 to 669,786 in 2000. The majority of counties reaching the 5 percent threshold are located in the Western part of the state, where Hispanic population growth was driven mainly by the housing boom associated with urban sprawl surrounding Seattle ( Seattle Times 2006). In addition to new Hispanic minority counties, the counties in Washington that previously had high Hispanic populations also increased their percentages. Yakima County, located in south-central Washington, increased from 24 percent Hispanic in 1990 to 36 percent in 2000. As one of the nation's most agriculturally productive regions, this area has been a large draw for unskilled, immigrant labor from south of the border since the beginning of World War II and the establishment of the Bracero Program. The well-established Hispanic communities of Yakima County vary greatly from the newly established ones in the western part of the state. The existence of long-standing social services, a large Spanish speaking community, and a direct bus line to Mexico have helped to establish Hispanic immigrants in this area. While counties with relatively new Hispanic population growth are just becoming aware of the challenges presented by their newly growing Hispanic populations, Yakima County has been addressing them for years. For example, schools have responded to the bilingual nature of the population by enacting the Dual Language Program, which instructs every student in English and Spanish. Teachers using the program are encouraged by the sense of cooperation this approach fosters and hope this mentality will be transported outside of the classroom to the community at large and possibly even to the counties with recent Hispanic growth (Darian 2006).

Utah's Hispanic population more than doubled from 85,000 in 1990 to 200,000 in 2000 (United States Census Bureau 2002). Adding a conservative estimate of illegal immigrants places the Hispanic population of Utah at approximately 12 percent. Utah's Hispanic population increased in the counties surrounding the greater Salt Lake City area where many Hispanics are employed in the restaurant industry and other service sectors of both Salt Lake City and the nearby resort of Park City. Dana Williams, mayor of Park City, recently described the town as being inoperable without Hispanic immigrants (Salt Lake Tribune 2006). One outcome of Hispanic population growth in Utah has been the creation of a Hispanic cultural landscape, particularly in Salt Lake City where uniquely Hispanic neighborhoods have been established.

Utah now has Spanish language television programming, radio stations, Yellow Pages, and chambers of commerce (Deseret News n.d.).

The Hispanic population of the West increased by about 50 percent, the same as in the Northeast and the United States in general, but the West still had 66 percent of all U.S. Hispanics in 2000. Because of its large population its percentage increase is lower than all the other regions.

Regional Trends: The South

The South ³ (along with the Midwest) experienced the largest change of all U.S. regions. Five states increased by over 200 percent between 1990 and 2000; and North Carolina increased by 393 percent during that same period. In 2005 there were 2.5 million Hispanics in the South, two million more than fifteen years previously (Table 4).

Table 4 Change in Southern Hispanic population, 1990–2005 (United States Census Bureau 2001b; Pew Hispanic Center 2005).

		2000		2005
Hispanic Population	1990 Numbers	Numbers	% Increase	Numbers	% Increase
Arkansas	19,876	86,866	337	130,328	50
Georgia	108,922	435,227	300	625,382	44
Kentucky	21,984	53,002	141	65,177	32
Louisiana	93,044	107,541	16	126,856	18
Mississippi	15,931	39,569	60	48,795	23
North Carolina	76,726	378,963	393	544,470	44
South Carolina	30,551	95,076	211	136,615	44
Virginia	160,288	329,540	105	440,988	34
West Virginia	8,489	9,670	15	12,279	27
Totals	560,440	1,613,960	180	2,440,321	51
(Florida)	1,574,143	2,682,715	70	3,433,355	30

The economic restructuring of the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the creation of migration networks between Latin America and the U.S. South as several economic sectors Hispanicized their labor force: furniture construction; forestry; agriculture; and especially pork and poultry processing. The Hispanization of certain economic sectors combined with an economic boom between 1990 and 2000, established the South as a major migratory destination for Hispanics (Fig. 7). Despite growth in service-sector employment at the national scale, many Hispanic workers were employed in either construction or manufacturing, including poultry and pork processing in 2000. Hispanic population growth has been driven primarily by recent immigrants from Mexico who tend to be young males with comparatively low levels of education (Pew Hispanic Center 2005). Many of the current demographic changes occurring in the South can be traced to the restructuring of the meatpacking industry, which began in Iowa in 1960 (Griffith 1995, 129).

Figure 7 Hispanic population of the South, 1990.

The Hispanic population of the South increased three-fold from 450,000 in 1990 to over 1.5 million in 2000, with three-fourths of the population in three states: Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. In 1990 no southern county had achieved the 5 percent level of Hispanics; however, by 2000 Hispanic population was 82 percent. If current trends continue the United States southern population will double again by 2010 to over three million.

Restructuring of Meatprocessing in the Midwest and South

As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1980s, one of the authors was vaguely aware of a labor dispute between meatpackers and the Hormel company in Austin, Minnesota. This student did not pay much attention to the strike because his research focused on Hispanics in the United States, and a union dispute in an all white town did not seem important to the geography of Hispanics. He was wrong. The Hormel strike signaled a shift in the beef, pork, poultry, and turkey processing industries in the Midwest that eventually led to a substantial increase in the number of Hispanics throughout the United States, but especially in the South.

In 1980, approximately 70 percent of meat processing jobs were unionized, with an average wage of $18 per hour (adjusted for inflation). Today these jobs are increasingly dominated by low wage, nonunion, legal and illegal immigrant laborers who start at $8–$9 per hour. This is not a case of low-wage immigrant labor taking jobs away from high-paid Americans; rather it is a story of vertically integrated corporations breaking unions and replacing their labor with low-paid immigrants (Broadway 1995, 25).

The IBP Revolution

The switch to nonunion labor in meatpacking began in 1960 when Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) opened a plant in Denison, Iowa, which was partially funded by a loan from the Small Business Administration. IBP's initial business model was based on two revolutionary ideas:

1. build plants that do not require skilled labor and pay the workers less; and

2. build plants in rural areas where the cattle are located.

Before IBP, meatpacking followed the same business model established in the nineteenth century. Cattle were moved by rail to Chicago and Milwaukee stockyards and herded to the top of a building where skilled butchers killed and dressed the cattle into usable portions as the carcass moved down the building. The movement of cattle by rail, however, created stress and weight loss thereby reducing profits. Unions were particularly powerful in the meatpacking industry because of the perishable nature of the product, and they managed to keep wages high. As a result, profit margins in meatpacking were often lower than one percent. The big five packers at the beginning of the twentieth century—Swift, Armour, Cudahy, Morris, and Wilson—actually made much of their money outside of meatpacking (Stull et al. 1995, 54).

By using unskilled labor in repetitive tasks, the IBP plant in Denison, Iowa, reduced labor costs. By locating the plant in the heart of beef country it reduced transportation costs and increased productivity, creating profit margins greater than one percent. Other IBP plants followed in Fort Dodge, Sioux City, and Perry, Iowa; Luverne, Minnesota; and a state-of-the-art, flagship plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, in 1965.

A third IBP innovation was boxed beef. Before IBP, meatpacking plants provided supermarkets with cuts of beef that were then finished by skilled, unionized butchers in supermarkets. Boxed beef reduced the need for unionized supermarket butchers because the cuts were already finished and boxed. The factory system and boxed beef directly threatened the jobs of unionized butchers and meatpackers. In 1968, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters union merged with the United Packinghouse Workers to fight IBP and the downward trend in wages. In 1970, they struck the IBP plant in Dakota City, Nebraska. IBP argued that since their work force was unskilled, it did not need to pay the industry standard. The unions argued that since they did the same type of work, they should be paid the same wage.

IBP locked out the strikers and bused in workers from Mexico; whether they were legal or illegal is unknown. IBP fed and housed the Mexicans in the plant and resumed production at about 50 percent of capacity. After a protracted eight month battle, the union lost. IBP broke the union and continued to hire lower wage, unskilled, nonunion workers from Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

After 1970, IBP implemented a strategy whereby it opened plants not only where there was ready access to cattle, but also easy access to low wage, pliable, nonunion, immigrant, and local Hispanic labor. IBP opened plants in Amarillo, Texas, in 1973; Pasco, Washington (Yakima Valley area), in 1976; and Garden City, Kansas, in 1980. During the late 1980s and 1990s the unusually low unemployment rates in the United States increased IBP's reliance on imported Mexican labor. IBP worked with the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) to help maintain a steady supply of legal Mexican immigrants. The INS program, “Basic Pilot,” was designed to help companies comply with laws that prevented them from hiring undocumented workers. Many companies were wary of working with the INS because if they were found to be hiring undocumented workers penalties would be severe, including fines and possible criminal prosecution. To encourage greater participation in the employee verification program the INS tacitly offered immunity to those firms that enrolled in the Basic Pilot program. IBP was one of the first to sign up in October of 1997 ( Wall Street Journal 1998). They advertised on U.S. Spanish language radio stations and in Mexico promising transportation, health care, and a starting wage of $7 an hour to qualified employees. IBP representatives established offices in Mexico where they worked with the INS to screen possible employees and verify their documentation. However, there is a very sophisticated black market for fraudulent documents and IBP may not have looked too closely at these workers because they needed the labor.

In the 1990s, the number of immigrants employed in meatpacking plants sky-rocketed. In 1990, for example, IBP opened a new facility in Lexington, Nebraska. The 1990 census enumerated 329 Hispanics in Lexington. Ten years later, the 2000 census enumerated 5,121 Hispanics, 51 percent of the total population. Many of those Hispanics came from west-central Mexico or along the border where IBP established recruitment centers.

While IBP was enrolled in Basic Pilot, the INS offered the same arrangement to other sectors of the economy such as restaurants and apparel manufacturers, who expressed little interest in the program. The INS then began to step up enforcement of these industries while leaving meatpacking alone. But by 1995, with unprecedented low unemployment and pressure from businesses, the INS shifted its strategy. It clamped down on the border and focused on deporting undocumented aliens who committed crimes. The INS also dramatically reduced raids on firms suspected of employing undocumented workers. The result has been an increase in immigration from Latin America, partly because, once in the United States, Hispanics stay longer because the border is much more difficult, dangerous, and expensive to cross and also because the threat of deportation has been essentially removed. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were ten million undocumented workers, many of them in the South and Midwest. Before the 2006 midterm elections, the number of illegals in the United States became a political issue and the INS began raiding plants that employed illegals. Almost overnight the INS reversed its ten-year policy of ignoring firms that hired illegal aliens. Some politicians, hoping to capitalize on the issue, have suggested rounding up all illegals, returning them to their country of origin, and then building a big fence along the border. This approach would cost billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars and still would not solve the problem.

In the 1970s, other meatpacking companies had to follow the IBP model or go out of business. A wave of mergers and acquisitions resulted and the big five have been replaced by the big three companies of IBP, ConAgra, and Excel, who control over 70 percent of the beef slaughtered in the United States. Armour closed seventeen packing plants in 1985 and sold them to ConAgra who reopened the plants as nonunion plants using immigrant labor. The result is that wages in meatpacking have declined in relation to other manufacturing jobs. In 1960, meatpackers earned $2.60 per hour; the average for all manufacturing jobs was $2.26 per hour. In 1990, meatpackers averaged $8.74 per hour; whereas the average for all manufacturing jobs was $10.83 per hour (Broadway 1995, 25).

The hispanization of the labor force in certain sectors of the economy is well established in the literature (Valle and Torres 2000; Sassen 1996; Hackenberg 1995, 236; Scott and Paul 1991). It is part of the overall process of global economic restructuring whereby U.S. manufacturing jobs either move overseas, or firms replace their labor with nonunion, low-wage immigrants in order to compete in the global marketplace. United States construction firms, hotels, and beef producers cannot move overseas and have opted for the latter strategy, a strategy not without its costs, however.

Reliance on non-or limited English-speaking immigrant labor has led to high turnover rates, averaging about 100 percent a year. High turnover rates are actually advantageous to the meatpacking industry because after six months of full time employment, many companies provide health care and wage increases (Stull and Broadway 1995). Because of high turnover rates there is a constant need for new immigrants. When a recruited migrant leaves a packing plant, his or her labor must be replaced, thereby creating a constant flow of Hispanic immigrants. Dozens of small Midwestern towns that previously had few Hispanics now find that in some cases Hispanics are the majority, which creates a need for bilingual education, bilingual services, migrant health care clinics, and low income housing, all of which may lead to an increase in taxes. There also are social problems that arise as rural Spanish-speaking Catholics settle in small English-speaking Protestant towns in the Midwest and the South. In 2006, for example, the state of Georgia passed tough new legislation greatly restricting services and education to illegals. Georgia is the second fastest growing Hispanic state because of implosion.

Vertical Integration: Implosion

Vertical integration exists when a firm controls all segments of the production process. Furuseth (2001, after Hart 1970) describes the vertical integration and consolidation process as “implosion.” The term implosion describes how beef and pork production has changed from several small, geographically dispersed family farms to a more concentrated corporate pattern. Implosion has been used by some scholars to describe the economic processes that create new industries and migrant streams to Midwestern and Southern states. Implosion in beef processing was relatively slow compared to the implosion that has occurred in pork processing.

Pork Industry

The pork industry followed the beef industry in its rural development strategy, economies of scale, and geographic concentration, that is, implosion (Furuseth 1997). In 1980, less than 10 percent of pork processors were vertically integrated; by 2000 over 80 percent were. In 1982, 330,000 farms produced hogs and pigs; ten years later there were only 180,000, yet they produced 17 percent more hogs and pigs (Furuseth 2001). The geographic pattern of pork production also has changed dramatically. Traditionally, pork has been concentrated on Midwestern family farms. In 1990, the Midwest produced about 77 percent of all pork products. Since 1990 there has been a geographic shift to the Southeast, especially North Carolina. In 1990, North Carolina slaughtered about 2.5 million hogs and by 2000 that number rose to over 9 million. The “North Carolina System,” as it is known, was pioneered by Wendell Murphy in Duplin County and adapted by pork producers throughout the state. North Carolina went from being the tenth largest pork processing state in 1990 to the number two position in 2000. Nine of the top 50, and three of the top ten, pork processors were in North Carolina in 2002, most in the southeastern coastal plain (News and Observer 1995) (Fig. 7).

An increase in pork processing plants in North Carolina led to problems such as water pollution, bad odors, and a decrease in housing values near pork plants. A backlash resulted, and the North Carolina legislature now rigorously regulates pork plants. As a result, since 1997 there have been few new pork plants built in North Carolina. New zoning restrictions led corporate pork producers to move to more “pork friendly” states such as Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Utah.

The rapid rise in pork production in North Carolina led to labor shortages. Traditionally, North Carolina pork producers relied on local African Americans (Cravey 1997). Labor shortages meant that North Carolina began to rely increasingly on immigrant labor from Latin America and the U.S. Southwest. As a result, five of the thirty U.S. counties that experienced the most rapid growth in Hispanic populations between 1990 and 2000 were in North Carolina. North Carolina's Hispanic population increased over 300 percent between 1990 and 2000, from 76,726 to 378,963, and now constitutes over 5 percent of the state's total population (United States Census Bureau Census 2001). By 2005 there were over 500,000 Hispanics in North Carolina, most from gateway communities in the United States and Latin America. The largest number of North Carolina Hispanics come from gateway communities in California, Texas, New York, and Florida. Hispanics living in the I-85 corridor are employed primary in agricultural and manufacturing activities, especially pork processing (Johnson-Webb 2002).

The same issues associated with large scale Hispanic immigration to Midwestern beef processing towns are evident in North Carolina. These include housing shortages, lack of bilingual services, overcrowded schools, increased crime, and racism. Forty-two percent of North Carolinians said they harbored negative feelings towards Hispanics and 55 percent said they felt uncomfortable around non-English speakers. Only 26 percent said Northerners made them feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, Hispanics have opened a number of restaurants and businesses, thereby increasing tax revenue. Hispanics also provide a strong work ethic and fill much-needed employment shortages. Furthermore, without the Hispanic labor force the billions of dollars made in pork processing would not have been possible.

Like many Hispanic communities outside the Southwest, pressure on Hispanics to assimilate is great. North Carolina officials often talk about the problems and processes associated with assimilating Hispanics. The problems may be even greater than they realize. Recently arrived Hispanics tend to settle in the same neighborhoods, creating Latin American islands where Hispanics may speak Spanish, eat food from their home country/region, and celebrate local traditions and holidays, thereby slowing assimilation. The explosion of Spanish language media and bilingual education means that Hispanics may never need to learn English. Racism also has the tendency to reduce assimilation by postponing Anglo-Hispanic interaction and intermarriage, which is a key to assimilation.

North Carolina Hispanic communities are considered “New” communities (Haverluk 1998). New communities were settled by Anglos, but later received a large number of Hispanic immigrants. Previous research has shown that Hispanics in New communities assimilate at higher rates than Hispanics in other communities, but not all New communities assimilate at the same rate (Haverluk 1998). In some New communities in Texas, Hispanics are now the majority and they have not assimilated. Because North Carolina Hispanics are recent immigrants, they have very high Spanish language retention rates. The increasing availability of Spanish language media may slow the assimilation process, but assimilation is by no means inevitable. Historically, immigrant groups have assimilated by the third generation; since many North Carolina Hispanics are still first generation, it will take about forty years to know whether the traditional assimilation models will hold for Hispanic immigrants in North Carolina. Another factor that affects assimilation is permanence. If the North Carolina Hispanic population sees itself as a permanent settler population they will be more likely to assimilate than a population that expects to return to Mexico or South Texas.

Poultry Industry

Unlike pork and beef, poultry production has been vertically integrated and has relied on low wage labor for decades, historically African Americans or women. When Americans began eating less red meat in the 1970s, chicken production soared and labor became scarce. Like the pork and beef industries, the poultry industry began to rely on legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America.

Ninety percent of U.S. poultry production is located in the South, primarily because of its milder climate, which allows chicks to be raised all year long with very low overhead. Another important factor is the large number of small independent farmers and large agricultural labor force. A southerner from the Delmarva Peninsula, Frank Perdue, is generally credited with establishing the modern poultry industry. He vertically integrated his firm and began mass producing poultry to sell in large urban markets (Rubenson and Shipper 2001; Griffith 1995, 142) .

Vertical integration for poultry includes control of the eggs, chicks, feed, growing, processing, and selling finished meats, including transportation and marketing. Arkansas-based Tyson foods, Perdue's largest competitor, started to integrate in 1936 and was fully integrated by the 1960s (Tyson Foods, Inc. 2001).

During the 1970s, red meat garnered a lot of bad press. Research suggested that too much red meat increased the risk of coronary disease. As a result American consumers shifted to poultry, from less than forty pounds per person annually in the 1970s to over sixty pounds per person annually in the 1990s, while the consumption of beef fell. Tyson and Perdue were perfectly positioned to meet the new market demand.

In the 1970s, most of the labor in poultry processing plants was local. Sometime in the late 1980s, and certainly by the mid-1990s, poultry processing became a job for immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The hispanization of poultry processing varies from plant to plant and from company to company, but the industry average is around 50 percent, about 25 percent of whom are illegal (New York Times 2001).

Why did firms turn to immigrants? There are several reasons: (1) labor shortages; (2) lower wages; (3) more pliable labor force; and (4) to break unions. The fourth reason is not significant in the South where the poultry industry was never unionized.

Labor Shortages

For much of the 1990s, U.S. unemployment was effectively zero, especially for difficult, low-paying, and dangerous jobs such as poultry processing, which have some of the highest injury rates in the manufacturing sector (Broadway 1995, 42). The number of poultry workers in the United States increased from 83,000 in 1970 to 180,000 in 1990. To find labor, many firms began to recruit in South Texas and Mexico. Many of these same companies offered bonuses to their employees for recruiting laborers. These practices helped create kinship migration networks; essentially word-of-mouth familial networks that recruited poultry workers from South Texas, Mexico, and Central America (Jones 1972). A similar process has been identified in shoe manufacturing in Los Angeles and cucumber harvesting in North Carolina (New York Times 2000a)

Lowering Wages

The profit margin on meat and poultry processing is between one and two percent, with labor accounting for about 10 percent of the total manufacturing cost. Lowering wages and increasing the number of animals slaughtered leads to higher profit margins. The same kinship networks that recruit illegal labor also facilitate labor reproduction and drive down wages (Broadway 1995, 25). Since many of the workers are related, they often live several families to a house in order to reduce housing costs. The starting poultry wage of $6 an hour is not a living wage. Traditionally, poultry workers have been women and African Americans who were not expected to support a family on a poultry worker's salary. When the labor shortages hit in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many firms turned to immigrant labor to avoid raising wages.

Pliable Labor Force

Immigrants, especially illegals, are not in a very strong bargaining position because they can be deported at any time. A 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that illegal immigrants are not entitled to back pay if they are fired for labor organizing and as a result illegals tend not to organize. Lack of bargaining power also keeps wages low. Because poultry farms have typically been located in the South, poultry workers have been paid below the national average for manufacturing, 62 percent below the national average in 1970. Even after a period of labor shortages and massive hiring by the industry, wages for poultry workers were still only 63 percent of the manufacturing average in 2000 (Broadway 1995, 24).

A low wage, pliable, immigrant labor force is exactly what many large poultry processors want. Beginning in the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Hispanics and Latin Americans migrated to the U.S. South. As in the pork and beef industry there is a high turnover rate in poultry processing. Many Hispanics begin looking for other jobs almost immediately after being hired. Poultry plants replace the labor that moves on to other jobs, thereby creating a continual stream of both legal and illegal immigrants to U.S. meatpacking plants. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is aware of this fact, which led to a three-year long underground investigation of Tyson Foods. The INS uncovered a system in which Tyson employees contacted local Hispanic immigrants who owned stores that cater to Mexicans. Tyson employees asked store owners with contacts in Latin America to help provide workers, often as many as 300 a week. The store owners would contact friends and family in Latin America, pay acoyote (a guide to transport them over the border), drive migrants to a Tyson plant, and provide them with fake documents. The federal government brought suit against Tyson, but its managers were acquitted of all charges that they knowingly hired illegals.

Changes in beef, pork, and poultry processing led to a reliance on low-wage, chiefly Spanish-speaking, immigrant labor. But other sectors of the economy are increasingly reliant on immigrant labor including the hospitality sector, construction, and manufacturing. Johnson-Webb (2002) looked at the increase of Hispanics in North Carolina and cited economic restructuring and changes in meat processing, but also identified the hospitality sector as an important immigrant magnet. Johnson-Webb found that between 10 percent and 75 percent of “back-of-the-house” jobs, those unseen and unskilled jobs in restaurants and hotels, were held by Hispanics in 1999.

North Carolina turned to Hispanic laborers in the 1990s for several reasons: a lower than average unemployment rate; a booming economy; and the Hispanic work ethic. Meat processing firms recruited both formally and informally in the United States and in Mexico, as did other sectors. Johnson-Webb found that between 1985 and 1990 North Carolina Hispanics originated from the following places: abroad (1,110); Texas (590); New York (381); Chicago (159); and Massachusetts (135). These findings are consistent with other research in meat processing. A principal reason given for hiring Mexicans was because of their superior “work ethic.” Employers want Mexicans because they work hard for low pay.

Meatpacking is not the only industry that relies on illegal immigrants from Latin America. Approximately 75 percent of illegal Mexican immigrants are employed in four sectors: agriculture, retail, construction, and manufacturing. These sectors see illegal immigration as a net benefit, but what is the net effect of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy? There have been many attempts to answer this question, but few answers. A major obstacle is that data are often speculative due to the illegal nature of the employees. Another obstacle is that much of the data and analysis comes from think tanks or policy centers with identifiable agendas. Yet clearly certain sectors of U.S. society benefit from illegal labor and just as clearly other sectors of society are adversely affected.

Industries that benefit from illegal immigration include, but are not limited to: restaurants, hotels, construction, agriculture, meatpacking, domestic services, landscaping, textiles, and janitorial services. Some sectors of society see a net cost associated with illegal immigrants including, but not limited to: health care providers, educators, police and fire departments, prisons, the Drug Enforcement Agency, welfare providers, the Border Patrol, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Whether immigration is a net plus or net negative remains a point of debate. Many economists regard the 1997 National Research Council report as the most comprehensive. That study states that over their lifetimes immigrants provide a net benefit to the country in terms of taxes versus expenditures. Most free-market economists would argue that “markets don't lie” and that there are ten million illegals in this country because there is a need for them. If markets “don't lie,” the economic contribution of illegals is probably a net plus for the economy. The United States has the lowest priced meat of any industrialized country, in part because of its low wage, nonunion, illegal immigrant population.

Summary

The economic expansion and restructuring that occurred during the 1990s has reoriented Hispanic population growth from urban areas in traditional hub states to relatively small, rural, and primarily Anglo/Black communities. These demographic changes occurred throughout the United States, but are particularly pronounced in the Midwest and South, where sizable Hispanic populations were previously unknown. Rapid increases in Spanish-speaking immigrants present small towns with major challenges in the manner of education, poverty alleviation, and bilingual services. The ability of these communities to deal with these changes rests partly in the hands of Congress and its ability (or inability) to deal with illegal immigration. The last major attempt by the federal government to deal with illegal immigration was the Immigration Act of 1986, which established four new immigration provisions:

1. It created amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States since 1982. Over three million illegal immigrants, 70 percent of whom were Mexican, were accepted into the amnesty program and most were legal by 2000. In 2006, the INS estimated an additional ten million illegal immigrants for whom amnesty is currently being considered (Denver Post 2002), but the political will to formally address these issues is lacking, especially when powerful industry lobbyists argue for the status quo (New York Times 2000b). In 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives proposed a “get tough” bill addressing illegal immigration without amnesty, whereas the U.S. Senate proposal included tough measures along with amnesty. Some form of “regularization” of the border will be necessary in the future, however, and some type of guest worker program is inevitable.

2. The act required that employers verify the eligibility of all newly hired employees. This provision is the reason why all employees must now provide employers with proof of citizenship or proof of legal residence upon hiring. Instead of inhibiting immigration, this provision has led to the establishment of a sophisticated underground network of fraudulent document providers. Employers only have to ask for documentation; they do not have to verify its authenticity. Many meatpacking firms still rely on illegal aliens and comply with the letter but not the spirit of the law (New York Times 2002). In 2006, both the Senate and House proposed changes that would force employers to verify the documentation of their employees; but without severe penalties and a large, well-funded enforcement agency, firms will continue to look the other way when it comes to documentation fraud.

3. It introduced sanctions against employers that knowingly hire illegals. This provision was designed to mete out tough fines to persons or businesses that knowingly hire illegals. Since 1999, however, the INS has changed its strategy; rather than conducting raids, it has focused its resources on stopping immigrants from crossing the border. The result has not stopped, or even reduced illegal immigration, but instead has had the effect that more immigrants remain permanently in the United States. When the U.S./Mexico border was more open, many migrants returned to their sending countries during seasonal lulls or after they earned enough money to go back home and establish a business. Now that the border is much more tightly sealed, it is more dangerous and expensive and fewer Latin Americans are making the return trip.

4. It allowed agricultural workers to be recruited during times of labor shortages. Clearly the most ironic component of a bill designed to reduce immigration is the Replenishment of Agricultural Workers (RAW) component of the Act. RAW established a mechanism to authorize an additional 250,000 agricultural workers each year who could eventually be returned to Mexico.

Twenty years after its implementation, the Act of 1986 has been ineffective at stemming immigration from Latin America, yet we continue with a “failed” policy. The ineffectiveness of the 1986 Immigration Act led to Proposition 187 in California, which proposed that all state services be denied to illegal immigrants and their children, even if they were born in the United States. Proposition 187 led to a powerful Latino backlash and politically mobilized the large Latino population of California. The restrictive “get tough” House proposal of 2006 created a similar backlash and led to demonstrations by Hispanics larger in number than any protest since the Vietnam War. Unless the United States business model changes to a European model, that is, national identity cards, highly regulated labor markets, high union wages, strict workplace enforcement, and deportation of illegals, Latin Americans will continue to work illegally in the United States, and the United States will continue to enjoy inexpensive meat, vegetables, hotel rooms, and houses. As a result, the status quo—sectoral reliance on illegal immigrants—will probably continue even with increased border security. And, if current demographic trends continue, Hispanics are expected to number 100 million by 2050. Already, in 2005, the number of U.S. Hispanics, counting illegals, is estimated at 51 million, which makes it larger than the population of Spain.

Terrence W. Haverluk received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and spent the next ten years continuing his dissertation research on Hispanics in the United States. In 2004 he began writing a book on holistic geopolitics that was published by John Wiley and Son in April 2007. Currently, he is Professor of Geopolitics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.

Laurie D. Trautman received her B.A. in environmental economics from Western Washington University. After traveling for a few years, she attended Montana State University where she studied Hispanic population growth and the changing cultural landscape of the Yakima Valley. She received a M.S. in geography in 2006 and now works for the Big Sky Institute in Bozeman, Montana, USA.

Notes

1. For a detailed historical geography of these regions see Haverluk 1997.

2. The Census Bureau recognizes fifty-six categories of Hispanics. From Spain: Spaniard, Andalusian, Asturian, Castillian, Catalonian, Balearic Islander, Gallego, Valencian, Canarian, and Spanish Basque. From Mexico: Mexican, Mexican-American, Mexicano, Chicano, La Raza, and Mexican-American Indian. From Central America: Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Central American, Central American Indian, and Canal Zone. From South America: Argentinian, Bolivian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Venezuelan, South American Indian, Criollo, and South American. As well as Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Latin, and Latino. Other Hispanics include Hispanic, Spanish, Californio, Tejano, Nuevo Mexicano, Spanish American, Spanish American Indian, Meso American Indian, Mestizo, Caribbean, Multiple Hispanic. (Portuguese speakers are specifically excluded from the Hispanic category.)

3. Mississippi and Louisiana were not mapped because they only had one county greater than 5 percent Hispanic. Florida is not included because many geographers do not consider it part of the “South.”