Editorial: Hispanic population growth can build Pennsylvania political power
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Western Pennsylvania is not a melting pot of cultures.
The people who have come to or passed through Pittsburgh and surrounding communities have not blended into a homogeneous puree of creamy uniformity. And, really, who would want that anyway?
Instead, it’s more like a marketplace of skills, ideas, beliefs and cuisines that have given pockets of flavor. Italians, Poles, Russians, Jews, Blacks, Chinese and more have left their marks on the region’s communities, architecture, business and more.
Every wave of immigrants coming to the area has made it stronger. They built the bridges and the skyscrapers. They dug the coal and made the steel.
And now a new wave of people is being seen.
The 2022 Allegheny County Latinx Needs Assessment Report showed that Pittsburgh’s overall population grew by only 1% between 2010 and 2020. That might seem marginal, but it’s a positive avalanche compared to other areas of the state seeing population shrink because of migration and aging.
But the Hispanic population is an outlier. Over that same 10-year period, those numbers have grown by 80%. Pennsylvania-wide, the state’s economy has shown a similar 1.1% growth, while this one ethnic sub-economy has 6.2%.
For some, that will call attention to the shifting way the pie is sliced, with Hispanics making up a larger percentage of the Pennsylvanian pie than they once did. That can make people uncertain of their place in the landscape. It can play to the kind of fear that drives xenophobia and lashing out.
However, that ignores what the Hispanic population is bringing to the table — and in this case it’s the population itself.
The failure of Pennsylvania’s population to grow at the same rate as other states has consequences. Texas gained two congressional seats after the 2020 census. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one. Pennsylvania lost a seat.
Penn State’s assessment of census data showed a 45.8% increase in the state’s Hispanic population between 2010 and 2020. Without that growth, Pennsylvania could have lost even more of its national political power.
“Although the non-Latino community is on the (population) decline, the Latino community is on the rise, and I think that brings a lot of opportunity for growth,” said Brenda Garcia, director of marketing communications at Casa San Jose, a nonprofit community resource center in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood.
What the non-Hispanics need to realize is that growth is not just beneficial to the Hispanic community. Politically, growth for one group in Pennsylvania can help everyone in the Keystone State maintain not just relevance in national landscape but also importance.