Moving out?

Charles Oliver
Dalton Daily Citizen

December 07, 2008 12:08 pm

— Father Jesus David Trujillo Luna says he has seen “too many” of his Hispanic parishioners leaving Dalton’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church this year.
“I’ve had more than 50 families ask me for a blessing before they left,” he said. “These are families that have been here 15, 20 years. Their children were born here and raised here.”
Why are so many people leaving?
Trujillo says the recession and layoffs in the carpet industry have forced them to look elsewhere for work.
“They tell me there’s no work here. They’ve been looking for a couple of months and can’t find a job,” he said.
Aaron Moore, president of Dalton’s Latin American Community Alliance, says he wouldn’t call it a mass exodus of Hispanics.
“But it’s certainly what you might call an arterial bleed,” he said. “Many of our Hispanic families like many of our other low-income families live paycheck to paycheck, and as soon as that paycheck isn’t coming in on a regular basis, as soon as there are just a few weeks of unemployment, then they have to start looking for something to replace it.”
Where are they going? Trujillo says two destinations stand out: California and Mexico.
“Some of them have told me they are going back to California. One of the reasons is that the have family there,” he said.
Many of them have gone back to Mexico, and Trujillo says many of the children, especially the older children are not happy about that move.
“Mexico is a foreign country to them. Some of them don’t speak Spanish that well,” he said. “I know of one girl whose family moved back to Mexico. She had been in this country 16 years. Her Spanish is very weak. She basically speaks English.”
Trujillo says those children have moved with their families, but he says some of them have told him they planned to come back as soon as they could.
“This is their home,” he said.
Moore says he doesn’t believe that most of those who have left the area have gone to other countries.
“Most of the stories I here are that they are returning to the more migratory work that they may have had previous to coming here and that they are mostly looking within the United States,” he said. “They already know that the economy being as poor as it is in their home country they are not likely to find anything in their home country. That’s why they came here. Probably eight or nine out of every 10 I here of leaving this area are planning on moving to other parts of the United States.”
But local schools and other agencies say they haven’t seen sign of a large-scale Hispanic flight.
The number of Hispanic students in Whitfield County Schools, for instance, slipped to 4,503 in November from 4,633 in November 2007. But the number of Hispanic students in Dalton Public Schools actually rose slightly, to 4,391 in October from 4,320 in October 2007.
“I haven’t seen a lot of families leaving. I have a lot of families struggling, more than ever, but that is across race and ethnicity,” said Jackie Taylor, a social worker with Dalton Public Schools. “We have more people enrolling than withdrawing every day.”
To some extent, the Hispanics who are leaving this area may be balanced out by those coming in. Trujillo says that he has seen people coming to Dalton, from areas where the economy is even worse off, looking for jobs or staying with family members here.
And Moore says that in many families, the father’s have left the area looking for work and planning to bring their families when they find something.
“I do have lot of families that are doubling up, that are trying to make ends meet,” she said.
But Taylor adds that those families come from all racial and ethnic groups.
Doug Phipps, interim executive director of the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center, says that facility’s Hispanic dances have taken a big hit this year. He says those dances had once been one of the trade center’s top 10 revenue sources.
“In years past we would normally do eight to 10 (Spanish language) dances a year. We’ve only had two this year, and the two we had were not well attended,” he said. “That comes down to discretionary income and possibly relocation.”
On the other had, he says, the trade center’s quinceanera business has stayed steady, perhaps even increased this year. Quinceaneras are parties to celebrate a girl’s 15th birthday.
The flight of Hispanics from Dalton, as well as the general impact of the recession, has taken a bite out of Hispanic businesses, says Moore.
“Mom and pop type stores, community based businesses, tend to be very fragile and highly dependent on the economic situation of their immediate surrounding area,” Moore said. “I have spoken to several shop owners who, if they have not already closed up shop, are saying it won’t take much more for them to be forced out of business.”