n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
A growing presence
oanoke Hispanics are crowding classrooms, filling church pews, opening stores and shopping en masse at that most American of places: the Valley View Wal-Mart Supercenter, which recently dedicated an entire aisle to their specialty foods.
Though 2004 census figures said Hispanics numbered fewer than 2,000 in the city, informed people are saying — and there is physical evidence — that the population is much larger, at least five times more.
In Roanoke, Hispanic immigrants — some here legally, many not — have begun to reach a critical mass.
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The growth in the Roanoke Valley’s Hispanic population can be seen in the number of new churches that cater almost exclusively to Hispanics. The members of this one, the Iglesia de Dios (Church of God) near Williamson Road, are mostly from Honduras.From the woman packaging your bread to the man cutting your meat, the estimated 12 million people behind the issue of illegal immigration were living mostly quiet lives — until their presence became a matter of white-hot national debate this spring.
Why are they landing here, and what shape will their collective footprint take?
They could mean the difference between a growing Roanoke and a shrinking Roanoke: Since 1980, the city’s population has dropped more than 7,000 residents, with a median age that ranks as the 12th-oldest in the nation.
Soundslide Alvanzo Bello (left) and Victor Gonzalez (right) march outside the Roanoke City Goverment building along Campbell Ave. on May 1 while taking part in the Day Without Immigrants March held in cities across America. Amidst a national debate and like thousands of other Hispanic workers across the county, the two took the day off from work to push for immigrants' rights.That picture changes dramatically when you factor in the thousands of Roanoke Hispanics who operate below the radar, uncounted by census takers. Hispanic leaders put the number somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 and as large as 16,000 for the entire Roanoke Valley.
As church activist Lucy Tamez put it: “For every legal Latino I know, there are nine more illegal ones,” many in their 20s and younger.
If those figures are correct, it’s possible that not only is the city growing — using the conservative end of the estimate, Hispanics now make up 9.6 percent of the city’s population — but it’s also getting younger.
“In the past five years, Roanoke has become a pretty receptive settlement city for our people, and they are helping the city to grow,” said Enrique Escorza, consul general of Mexico, during an April documentation clinic at Preston Park Primary School. “They work hard for the people who hire them, which is incidentally why they are here: for dollars, not because they like the mountains of Roanoke.”
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