Politics & Government

Minority Rule in Prince William County

The 2010 Census shows that minorities for the first time make up more of the population than whites.

Prince William County is changing. Suburbs once populated with mostly white nuclear families have been diversified with a rush of Asians and Hispanics predominately from El Salvador and Mexico.

Prince William is very diverse, and for the first time minorities—blacks, Asians, Hispanics and other minorities— make up the majority of residents, according to Census data.

The Census shows that since 2000 the immigrant population has more than doubled to 76,413 people in Prince William County. An estimated 13,466 foreign-born people are from El Salvador, up from 5,392.

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Asians moved in by more than double the pace, along with double the Mexicans and Filipinos.

At the same time, the population of whites came at a much slower pace in Prince William County, rising to 193,800 from 181,477 in the year 2000.

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These trends are not uncommon for a growing urban area like Prince William County.

The Hispanic population saw the largest growth in Prince William County and in the entire state. Virginia's Hispanic population increased by 91.7 percent since 2000.

Prince William County has a population estimated to be 379,166. The Census shows that the Hispanic community grew from 27,338 in 2000 to  about 66,648 today.

"It is no longer as uncommon as we think," said Jeanne Batalova, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute.

The increase of Hispanics may have been even higher.

Prince William County has been the focus of the illegal immigration debate in Virginia when it passed a new policy in July 2008 that allowed police to check the residency status of any person stopped for questioning. Any officer who received the training then could detain the suspect and act as a federal immigration agent if they discover a violation. Other localities passed similar policies, including some in Maryland.

study by the Migration Policy Institute that looked at the application of these new enforcement policies found that localities that adopted the enforcement policy saw a decrease in the number of Hispanic immigrants. According to the , Prince William County lost 21 percent of its Hispanic illegal aliens from 2007 to 2009, dropping from 32,100 to 25,500, the report said.

Randy Capps, a senior policy analyst who helped author the study, said Prince William County won’t get less diverse, but the change of ethnic populations may not ever be as rapid as it was over the past decade.He said there are very high concentrations of Hispanics in Manassas and Manassas Park.

“My interpretation is it is a combination of the economy and the enforcement,” he said. “[The new enforcement policy] was enough to push some people out the door or to leave the area all together. It is not clear whether these are long-term or short-term changes.”

Prince William County had the University of Virginia conduct a study on the impacts the enforcement policies have had on the county, and the results were similar to what MPI found. But Capps said the UVA study was leaned more toward the statement that the enforcement was the biggest reason for the departure of illegal aliens. The MPI study said the departure of illegals was because of several factors.

He said there were preliminary signs that people were adjusting to Prince William’s police enforcement changes when in 2009 the population numbers started to increase again. But it was clear to him that the number of Hispanic children enrolling in local schools came to a standstill by 2009.

“As the job market improves other people may move in and be more careful of what they do and where they drive,” he said of any person who was in Prince William County and the country illegaly. “I would expect a rebound because of the outreach of the police. They have been able to quell a lot of the outrage. They changed the ordinance and they were very good about reaching out to the immigrant population and explaining things.”

He said immigrants are likely to be much less afraid of moving to Prince William, unlike in 2007 and 2008.

“But in general, we don’t know,” he said. “When the economy picks back up, the economy trumps enforcement. We have seen that in past years with border patrol apprehensions—we are at an all-time low in border apprehensions, which says less people are coming into America, but this could be because of the job market. At a certain point it is possible that stringent border control in combination with state and local policing activities may create a difficult enough climate where they won't want return during such a boon.”

But the fact is that the diversity in Prince William County opened up in the past decade and it is spreading to other metropolitan urban counties.

“Montgomery County, Md., is moving in that direction,” he said. “It is just joining the ranks. The changes toward diversity have their roots back in the late 1980s. It is not one group dominating; it is a bunch of different groups. You’ve got people from all over the world. Immigration is part of that story but so is the urbanization of the county. The Asian immigration is predominately legal. It is slowing down, but a lot of things changed with the recession.”


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