The students looked over the list of words, all in English, but only a handful recognizable.
A young woman stumbled to pronounce one word, certain that she’d never heard it spoken by her American friends.
“What is a-li-en-ated?” she asked, breaking apart the syllables in a soft accent.
“It’s when you feel like you don’t belong where you are. You feel all alone,” explained instructor Mary Alice Howe. “You feel like a stranger in a strange land.”
The mostly Hispanic immigrants, newly arrived in McHenry County, never had heard the word. But all certainly have felt its meaning.
Finding a sense of belonging in a predominantly English-speaking community has been difficult for many Hispanics who have left their native countries in search of better lives in McHenry County.
But with the Hispanic population’s growth clipping along at three times the rate of the county’s general population, there are clear indications that the immigrants are ready and willing to adapt to their new environment.
For one, there has been such a dramatic increase in students learning English as a second language that McHenry County College has opened new classrooms, in Marengo and McHenry, to supplement existing classrooms in Harvard, Woodstock and at the main Crystal Lake campus.
Enrollment in adult education classes at the college rose 52 percent this year from last, mostly due to explosive growth in the college’s basic English program.
And most of that program’s growth has come in the last three years, paralleling the sharp rise in the county’s population as a whole.
In recent years, local school districts have also initiated basic English classes to accommodate the influx of Spanish-speaking students. Some local companies are providing such programs for their employees.
“It is a fast-growing population, and it’s not going to stop,” said Esperanza Velasquez, director of the Illinois Migrant Council.
In the next decade, McHenry County’s Hispanic population is expected to increase by 66 percent, to 17,100 from 10,300, according to Woods & Poole Economics Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based firm that studies demographic trends nationwide.
During the same period, the county’s total population is expected to grow by 19 percent, to 277,000 from 233,000, according to the firm.
Even with such rapid population increases, Hispanics will remain a small percentage of the county’s total population. Still, they are increasingly a significant presence in McHenry County, as well as other outlying suburbs of Chicago, as migration continues.
Twelve years ago, Pascaul Olvera, 40, came to the U.S. from Mexico, following the path of relatives who had made the journey before him. He got by without learning English for 12 years until recently, when he landed a new job with a local park district.
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“Before, I was working with only the Spanish,” Olvera said. “We only spoke Spanish, so there was no need to learn.”
There are other signs that more Hispanics are making McHenry County their home.
When Juan Figueroa opened a Mexican grocery store in Crystal Lake in 1988, there were few similar stores around. Now, he has competitors in Woodstock and McHenry, as well as three competing stores in Harvard. And a new grocery, La Rosita, recently opened in Crystal Lake.
“For the first three years, business was nothing. Then, for the next three years, business was great,” said Figueroa, owner of Carniceria y Abarrotes Buena Vista on U.S. Highway 14. “Now, I have competition from another (Mexican) grocery in Crystal Lake, so business slowed down.”
Still, Figueroa, a native of Guadalajara, has achieved the elusive American dream that has attracted a steady flow of immigrants since the nation was born: Besides his Crystal Lake store, he owns Mexican restaurants in Algonquin and Crystal Lake and is a partner in a Mexican grocery in Rockford.
His Crystal Lake store now has a restaurant counter where he serves tacos, burritos, sandwiches and drinks, including pineapple juice and home-made ochata, a mixture of rice, banana and flavorings that tastes like liquid rice pudding.
Scores of colorful pinatas hang from the ceiling. The store is modest in appearance, but one detail indicates that his sales volume could be substantial: On the floor one day recently sat 16 cardboard boxes of tortillas, each containing 40 dozen tortillas–or 7,680 tortillas ready to sell.
Figueroa, 39, never completed high school. He learned how to run a small business as a child working beside his father, who operated a fruit market in Guadalajara.
“First and foremost, I think education is the most important element that is needed in the Latino community,” said Mario Perez, chairman of McHenry County College’s Hispanic Advisory Council.
“But I also think the established population needs to be educated to just what a Latino is and where they are coming from.”
In addition to the language barrier, there are other obstacles that threaten to hold back the Hispanic community, such as stricter immigration and welfare laws, the lack of social and medical services and a substantial lack of affordable housing.
Marin Guardado, 21, said he is trying to clear at least one hurdle for now: learning English. He came to McHenry County two years ago from Zacatecaz, a village in Mexico.
“I never learned because we work so many hours, we don’t have time,” Guardado said during a recent English class. “But I learn English. It helps you find better jobs.”