One of the biggest problems the state of Utah has is its undercount of immigrants, according to Michael Martinez.
“They missed almost half of the immigration,” Martinez said, in regard to the 2000 census.
Attorney and community activist, Martinez was the most vocal of three panelists at the Rocco C. Siciliano Colloquium?a two-day event that began Thursday?titled, “Migrants and Minorities in a Homogeneous State.”
Pamela Perlich, senior research economist in the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah, and Neil Ashdown, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, were also presenters on the panel.
Perlich presented a 150-year history of the census in Utah. According to Perlich, Utah is less diverse than the rest of the nation. Upon moving to Utah 15 years ago, she “noticed the absence of people of color.”
Until recently, 98 percent of the population was white, she said.
That remained true until the ’90s, Perlich said.
“We’ve had a great migration of Hispanic people,” she said. According to the 2000 census, Hispanics made up 9 percent of Utah’s population.
Along with the highest birth and fertility rate in the nation, the rate of immigration in Utah has aided it in becoming the fastest-growing state in the ’90s, Ashdown said.
During that decade, the Hispanic population grew 138 percent.
Although many immigrants are documented, there is a large suspected undercount of immigrants in Utah?especially those of Hispanic descent, according to Perlich.
For Martinez, that fact creates a major concern. Numbers aren’t sufficient alone, he said.
“It doesn’t tell me about state regulations and programs or projected trends,” Martinez said.
According to Martinez, the reason for the undercount is because of the three ways in which immigrants are tracked in Utah: tax records, school records and enrollment records for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
However, immigrants who are here “illegally” would not show up on any of those records, Martinez said.
“You couldn’t miss [the immigrant population], but it was missed,” he said.
Martinez believes the increase of Hispanics during the ’90s was 200 percent. By the end of this decade, Martinez believes there will be about 500,000 Hispanics in Utah. That would put the Hispanic population past the projections of 206,000 by the year 2015.
“We’re not prepared to deal with that growth,” he said.
The undercount will add to the budget problems in the state. It also cost Utah its fourth congressional seat, and failing to recognize all immigrants can have horrible results, Martinez said.
“[About 65] percent of immigrant children do not graduate from high school,” Martinez said. “It leaves an angry people who feel they’ve been abused by those who are better off.”
According to Martinez, we saw what that formula can result in on Sept. 11.
“We must recognize them, we must count them,” Martinez said, so we know what we need to do to provide services for them. “Whether we should or can is debatable,” he said.