Census Data: Jobs draw Hispanics to Iowa

Members of Iowa's fastest-growing ethnic group looking for the same things that draw anyone else, according to Sandra Sanchez-Naert, chairwoman of the state's Office of Latino Affairs.

“Iowa is definitely an interesting place for Latinos to move to,” said Sanchez-Naert, who said she often meets recent arrivals who from Chicago and California.

“They're moving to Iowa due to it being a much more calm and safe place to be, particularly young families,” she said. “It provides a good education, a lower unemployment rate, the cost of living is not too high. It provides a safer place to raise a family.”

According to data from the 2010 Census released today, Iowa's Hispanic population  soared 84 percent since 2000, to 151,544 last year – just under 5 percent of the state's 3,046,355 total.

Linn County's Hispanic population increased 41 percent, to 5,534. Hispanics comprise 2.6 percent of the county's total population, up from 1.4 percent a decade ago. Most – 4,176 – live in Cedar Rapids.

Johnson County's Hispanic population grew 122 percent over the decade, to 6,200. That share of the county's population is now 4.7 percent – closer to the state's 4.9 percent. Both counties remain overwhelmingly white – 91 percent for Linn, 98 percent for Johnson County. As a whole, Iowa's population is just over 98 percent white.

Darlene Schmidt,  executive director of the Community Health Free Clinic, said she noticed the trend about 2008 at the clinic in southeast Cedar Rapids serving low-income and uninisured people. More Spanish-speaking patients were coming in, “and they were having their 10-year-olds translate to the medical doctors what was wrong with them, and that was scaring the heck out of my doctors.”

So Schmidt and her staff planned monthly Saturday clinics just for Spanish-speaking patients, with Spanish-speaking doctors and pharmacists. Launched last November, the clinics draw about 15 patients monthly.

“It's been very popular, and it's not that we're not seeing the Hispanic people through the week,” Schmidt said. “It just makes it nice that they know they can come in and see a doctor with that language background.”

Detailed data hasn't been released yet, so it's not possible to determine whether Hispanic growth is driven by new migration or children born to young families already living here, but “it's both, definitely, I can tell you that,” said Sanchez-Naert.

Also like everyone else, Hispanics tend to gather in the state's larger communities. But they're a major presence in smaller towns: Hispanics make up 34 percent of the population in Chelsea in Tama County, and the 272 living in Conesville, Muscatine County, make up 63 percent of the town's total.

Sanchez-Naert said Hispanic families are a potential boon to rural communities seeking to reverse dwindling populations.

“If they were more welcoming, instead of seeing a decrease in population they might be seeing an increase,” she said. “Urban areas seem to be more tolerant and more welcoming. That is something that rural communities could start paying attention to.”