Nearly 1 in 5 Illinois residents speaks a language other than English in their home, a phenomenon linked to a flood of Hispanic immigrants into the Chicago area during the 1990s, according to U.S. Census Bureau data being released Monday.
That immigration surge, fueled by a lack of jobs in Mexico and plentiful but low-paying opportunities here, was a key reason why the data also showed the share of families living in poverty in both Illinois and the nation held steady during the decade despite an unprecedented economic boom.
The number of Illinoisans at least 5 years old who speak Spanish at home jumped from about 728,000 in 1990, or 6.8 percent, to more than 1.2 million in 2000, about 11 percent of the population, the new data revealed. That is slightly more than the 10.5 percent of U.S. residents who speak Spanish in their homes.
Spanish is by no means the only non-English language spoken in Illinois homes. Nearly 6 percent of Illinois residents spoke Polish, German, Russian or some other European language at home, while 2 percent spoke an Asian or Pacific Island language, data showed.
Such a dramatic increase in the number of Spanish-speaking people has broad implications for the Chicago area. It poses great challenges for schools, social service agencies, businesses, law enforcement authorities and others in neighborhoods and suburbs where Spanish increasingly has become the dominant language.
“When we looked at the first census numbers earlier this year, we certainly expected these language numbers to be this high, but you can’t help but be impressed,” said Jennifer Day, education branch chief for the Census Bureau. “It puts a lot of pressures on school systems and other places where people speak Spanish and the children are, at the least, bilingual.”
The new census data suggest those pressures may be even more intense in states like California and Texas, where the Hispanic population is far greater than in Illinois. In California, nearly 40 percent of the population does not speak English in the home. In Texas, the number is 32 percent.
By contrast, only 2.2 percent of West Virginia residents and 3 percent of Mississippi residents speak a language besides English in the home.
A vast array of new national and state census data unveiled Monday also showed:
While the percentage of Illinois residents who attained college degrees jumped over the decade, the percentage of people who had high school diplomas remained steady or perhaps even fell slightly.
More Top Picks Light Sensitivity Causes You Might Not Have Considered
The median value of a home in Illinois is about $130,000, nearly $10,000 more than the national average.
The new census data also showed that the wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them undocumented, dragged down overall income numbers during a decade of widespread economic prosperity.
About 10 percent of families in the state were in poverty in 2000, which, for a family of four, meant the household income was less than $17,601. In the 1990 census that figure also was about 10 percent.
“If you look at the two end points, you’ll see a wash,” said Chuck Nelson, an income data expert with the Census Bureau. “Over the course of the entire decade, we did not reduce the percentage of people in poverty.”
In fact, because of the increase in population, in Illinois there were nearly 2,200 more families in poverty in 2000 than a decade before–up from about 264,400 to 266,600. Nationally, nearly 338,000 additional families were in poverty.
Nelson said the many Latino immigrants, who tend to be less wealthy than native-born residents, likely stifled the income numbers.
The census data released Monday does not come from the 2000 census, but rather a separate nationwide survey of 700,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau last year that mirrors many of the questions on the census long form.
In Illinois, the bureau surveyed households in nearly one-third of the state’s counties, including every county in the Chicago metropolitan area except Lake.
Bureau officials cautioned that, unlike the 2000 census, the numbers are estimates and not an exact count. But census officials believe the data are some of the most accurate numbers that can be culled on a variety of demographic subjects.
Language data from the survey will be used by the U.S. Department of Education to help determine bilingual education funding.
Language data has much to reveal about how the 1990s tide of Latino and other immigrants are adapting to U.S. culture.
“I think that previous immigrant experiences show us that eventually people assimilate and learn the dominant language,” said Jorge del Pinal, assistant population division chief for the Census Bureau. “And because of all the media today, and with movies and television, I am confident that kids will pick up English even quicker than their immigrant parents of generations past.”
Still, some adult immigrants in the Chicago area, which has a handful of communities where Hispanics make up the largest ethnic group, often live in a totally Spanish universe.
For Margarita Minas, 23, on Chicago’s Northwest Side, the world is in Spanish, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Living with her husband, mother, 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, she could be anywhere Spanish is spoken: her native village outside the coastal town of Acajutla in El Salvador, her husband’s hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, or Chicago.
Throughout the day, she listens to Spanish-language music, Spanish-language TV, reads the local Spanish-language newspapers. When friends call, they’re Latinos and the conversation is in Spanish. On weekends, her family gets together with friends and relatives, all of whom communicate in Spanish because it’s the common language.
Though her husband works in a factory where people from many different backgrounds labor side by side, the common language on the assembly line is Spanish.
“He does speak some English,” she said. “But here at home, we don’t need to. It’ll change when the children go to school, I know, but for now, we don’t really need to know English.”
Juan Giron is another in Chicago’s Spanish-speaking world, although he speaks Spanish by choice, not necessity.
Giron was born 41 years ago on 18th Street, delivered by a student midwife in a natural birth and an instant U.S. citizen. He grew up in the neighborhood, attending Pilsen Academy, Cooper Elementary and later St. Ignatius Prep for high school. At DePaul University, he received a BA in business administration and marketing.
He speaks perfect English, can converse about the “Brady Bunch” if forced to, and can pun in the language of Walt Whitman with the best of America’s other native sons.
But at home, Giron and his Mexican-born wife, Sandra–who’s also flawlessly fluent in English–prefer to talk exclusively in Spanish. And last year, they let the U.S. Census know about their preference.
As a result, their two sons, Antonio, 12, and David, 8–both born in Chicago like their dad–are fully bilingual and, said Giron, bicultural too.
But the Girons–like a lot of other Latinos, especially the well-educated–don’t speak English because they see their home as an isle in which their cultural heritage can be preserved and celebrated.
“I’ve noticed that kids get to a certain age, before they start school, they speak perfect Spanish,” said Giron. “But as soon as they mix with Americans–their best friends are English speakers–they speak English all the time. They understand Spanish, but they can’t respond in Spanish. They lose it some, then they get to college and they re-discover their roots, and they start speaking Spanish again and exploring their culture. It’s a question of phases of identity.”
The influx of Mexican immigrants may have also been a factor in a slight decline recorded in the share of Illinois residents who held a high school diploma.
In Illinois, 29.4 percent of all residents at least 25 years old had a high school diploma last year, down from 30 percent in 1990.
More Top Picks Best Ai Fitness Mirrors For Home Gyms
At the same time, the share of state residents with college degrees recorded an impressive increase. In 1990, 13.5 percent of Illinois residents at least 25 had graduated from college. Last year, the number was 17 percent.
Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at Loyola University Chicago, suggested that Latino immigration held down the share of high-school educated residents in the overall population.
“You have a lot of older people with only high school educations who are dying off and you have all these young, new immigrants without a high school diploma, so there are a lot of dynamics playing into that,” Johnson said.