BENTON COUNTY : Hispanic moms often unmarried (More illegals to feed in Arkansas)

Northwest Arkansas Times ^ | 11/25/07 | MARK MINTON

[pulaskibush]

ROGERS — Nearly half of the babies delivered by Hispanic mothers in Benton County last year were born out of wedlock. That was double the rate for white, non-Hispanic mothers in the county. The statistics mirror national trends that have the attention of advocates of all persuasions. Immigration critics warn of looming consequences, from persistent poverty to welfare dependency. The Bush administration also makes the connection: Preventing out-of wedlock pregnancies is a key to its $ 100 million “healthy marriage” strategy for curbing welfare. But in Benton County, the state’s No. 1 home for Hispanic immigrants, health and welfare officials report no signs of a strained safety net. And Hispanic leaders say their famed family networks are strong in spite of the rising numbers of out-of-wedlock births. Of the 845 babies delivered by Hispanic mothers in Benton County last year, 412 — 49 percent — were born to unwed mothers, according to the Arkansas Department of Health. The percentage mirrors the U. S. rate of 48 percent for Hispanics.

In America overall, out-ofwedlock births hit a record 37 percent of all births in 2005, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Amid such a broad-based shift, and an emotionally charged debate over immigration, some religious and community leaders were reluctant to discuss out-of-wedlock His- panic births in Benton County, where an estimated 27, 000 Hispanics make up 13 percent of the population. For instance, a spokesman for St. Raphael Catholic Church, home to one of Northwest Arkansas’ largest Hispanic congregations, said the Springdale church ministers to people regardless of marital status and had nothing to say about births outside of marriage.

SUPPORTIVE PARENTS “I kind of wanted a baby,” said Jennifer Bonilla, 16, a student at the Rogers School District’s Crossroads Alternative School. “I was like, I’m too young. But it happened. I was happy when I found out,” she said. Bonilla is one of three mothers among the school’s 60 students. All three are Hispanic. As with the others, Bonilla lives with her parents. The father of her baby is a construction worker, she said, and helps with money and chores such as taking the year-old baby, Juan Carlos, to a neighbor for babysitting during the day. Bonilla said she and the father plan to marry once she graduates from high school. Bonilla said her mother, who works in the mailroom of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, also gave birth young and now is a 33-year-old grandmother. Her father quit school after ninth grade but owns four dump trucks and operates a hauling business, Bonilla said. Both her parents are from El Salvador. They are in the country legally, she said. She broke the news to her parents via a phone call from Mexico, where she was visiting when she learned she was pregnant. “My mom, she didn’t talk to me for a long time,” said Bonilla, who has two little brothers and is the only daughter. But her parents are supportive now, she said. Was she surprised that nearly half of Hispanic babies in America are born outside of marriage ? “I have an uncle who has like five kids with different girls,” she said. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all.” No marriage doesn’t mean no care, said Nancy Rodriguez, 17, a senior at Crossroads Alternative School. “Us, as Mexicans, we take the responsibility of having the child even if we don’t have the partner,” she said.

Rodriguez, the mother of an 18-month-old daughter, said the father of her baby has returned to Mexico, and they have no plans to marry. But her family fills the gap. “My baby, she has a father role,” Rodriguez said. “She calls my dad, ‘Dad.’ I don’t got to worry about that.” Down the hall, at a parenting class for pregnant girls, two of the five on a recent morning were Hispanic. Brenda Hurtado, 17, said she’s expecting a daughter in early February. The 18-year-old father-to-be lives with her in her parents’ home, she said, and they plan to marry after she graduates. Hurtado, who has an older sister who gave birth to three children without marrying, said her parents were happy to learn she had become pregnant. “I don’t know how they knew,” she said. “They knew before I knew.”

A POSITIVE EVENT Hispanic families seem more accepting of teenage pregnancies, said Linda Haley, director of counseling for the Rogers schools. “It’s not devastating news,” she said, “whereas in white families it’s a crisis.” Surveys by the National Center for Health Statistics reinforce the conclusion, finding that Hispanic teens themselves view teen pregnancies less negatively. In 2002, the most recent survey, one-fourth of nevermarried Hispanic teenage girls considered teen pregnancy a positive event — twice the overall rate, the survey found. Although teen birth rates have fallen to modern lows, the rate for Hispanic teens — 82 births per 1, 000 girls ages 15-19 — is the highest.

Michael Lopez, director of the National Center for Latino Child & Family Research, a nonprofit research organization in Maryland, said out-of-wedlock birth numbers may reveal a picture of what it’s like to be in poverty more than what it’s like to be Hispanic. One in four Hispanic women of child-bearing age lives in poverty, census data show, and Hispanic mothers are far less likely to have completed high school than non-Hispanic whites or blacks: 52 percent, compared with 77 percent for blacks and 89 for non-Hispanic whites.

The Rogers and Springdale school districts don’t track graduation rates by race and ethnicity and couldn’t say how many Hispanics drop out. Lopez said Hispanic culture mitigates rather than exacerbates the trend toward out-ofwedlock births. “You get a much stronger commitment to the concept of family in the Latino population,” he said. Hispanic attitudes about abortion don’t appear to be a driving factor. Rebecca Wind, spokesman for the Guttmacher Institute, said the New York City nonprofit’s 2003 survey of women obtaining abortions found that abortion rates for Hispanic women fall between those for non-Hispanic whites and blacks.

The center is named for Alan F. Guttmacher, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America until his death in 1974. Could fear of applying for a marriage license be behind some out-of-wedlock births ? Benton County Clerk Mary Lou Slinkard, who issues marriage licenses, said she asks for Social Security cards along with government-issued identification cards of any nationality. But even if the couple doesn’t have the Social Security cards, they still get the marriage license, she said. Immigration agents have never examined her license records.

DIFFERENT CUSTOMS At Centro Cristiano church, Pastor Armando Rodriguez, a one-time shortstop for the Mexico City Reds who joined the U. S. Army and found his calling at Fort Hood, Texas, looks over a congregation of immigrants. The crowd that filed into the Rogers church for a recent Wednesday service included dozens of small children. But not single mothers. Julio Olvera, a church member who agreed to do a quick survey of the main hall, returned 10 minutes later and said he had located only one. In an interview, the pastor said his church has members from nine countries. “We’ve got some Chile, we’ve got some Peru,” said Rodriguez, rattling off the nationalities. “Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Ecuador.”

Hispanics generally do have strong families, the pastor said. But stresses such as finding a way in a new country, especially for the thousands who have come illegally, take a toll on families, he said. “Once they come here, the challenges are greater than the strength of the unit,” he said. American popular culture often doesn’t help, he said. “They come here to the United States, and we have such a high regard for the quality of life here,” Rodriguez said. “But sadly enough, we see the other side. The examples are not the prime ones.” Rodriguez’s wife, Sonia, who was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, said many immigrants from rural areas bring a tradition of out-of-wedlock births with them, however. They never viewed marriage as vital and are just carrying on their ways, she said. In Mexico, 38 percent of babies are born out of wedlock, almost identical to the overall percentage in the United States, according to numbers compiled by the United Nations. In El Salvador, it’s 73 percent.

(small conservative section 1) IMMIGRATION DEBATE Out-of-wedlock births have remained below the surface of the emotional debate over illegal immigration, but they recently emerged as a political issue for some. At the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors “fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted,” research director Steven Camarota released a report earlier this year titled “Illegitimate Nation” that underscored immigrant out-ofwedlock births. Out-of-wedlock births at levels approaching 50 percent are tough to square with the strong family values that President Bush and others have imputed to Hispanics, Camarota said in an interview. He said the numbers challenge Bush’s repeated assertion that “family values don’t end at the Rio Grande.” But even as Hispanics, projected to make up 25 percent of the U. S. population by mid-century, contribute to the raw numbers of out-of-wedlock births in America, they can’t be blamed for driving the trend, Camarota said. Not in a country where out-of-wedlock births have been climbing for decades.

Since 1960, the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers has risen sevenfold, said David Popenoe, author of the annual “State of Our Unions” report published by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Twenty-five percent of white babies are now born out of wedlock. For blacks, 68 percent. Along with declining marriage rates and increasing cohabitation, the overall rise in out-of-wedlock births reveals a weakening of marriage as the primary institution of family life in America, Popenoe said. It’s unlikely that immigration will shift the U. S. culture in a more traditional direction, he said, despite expectations that Hispanics would import traditional family values. “You could certainly say that Hispanics are more ‘familistic’ than non-Hispanics in this country,” Popenoe said. “They focus more on family life, and loyalty to family and things of that kind. Basically, that’s just an older way of living.” But, as Popenoe put it in his 2007 report, “Hispanics seem to have assimilated into the American culture of secular individualism more than the reverse.” Combined with Hispanics ’ high fertility rate — they are the youngest and fastest-growing segment of the U. S. population —

(small conservative section 2) the high percentage of out-of-wedlock births has some immigration critics warning of negative social consequences. “It just means in the long term more social breakdown and more welfare costs for the taxpayer,” said Heather Mac Donald of the conservative Manhattan Institute in New York. Mac Donald, whose recently released book The Immigration Solution addresses out-of-wedlock births, acknowledged that a higher percentage of black babies are born out of wedlock than Hispanic babies. “But the black population isn’t growing,” she said. One of every four babies born in Benton County last year was Hispanic. Nationally, about one-fifth of children under age 8 in the United States are Hispanic.

Even as critics sifting the birth numbers warn of coming social consequences, others paint a picture of Hispanic family strength and solidarity. “A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas,” the widely publicized 119-page report released this spring by Little Rock’s Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, never mentions out-of-wedlock births, but says children of immigrants are generally more likely to live in two-parent families than children of natives.(just their opinion?)

After the first generation in America, however, it’s much less likely that children born out of wedlock will be living with two parents, data show. Large extended families often pick up the slack for single mothers, said Judi Singleton, director of the nonprofit Family Network, which helps new mothers in Northwest Arkansas. But the charity doesn’t get any referrals about Hispanic mothers, Singleton said, because they rarely lack support. By at least one measure, the local welfare safety net also has yet to feel any strain. Loy Bailey, district manager of the Benton County Health Unit, said the federal WIC (Women, Infants, Children ) nutrition program, which assists with food needs for low-income pregnant women and mothers, has seen local caseloads decline over the past three years. Citizenship is not a requirement of the program. Food stamp clients in Benton County increased from 14, 431 people in 2004 to 18, 109 last year. Clients must be citizens or provide proof of legal-alien status. MARRIAGE INITIATIVE The Bush administration awards grants to nonprofits and church organizations to carry out its Healthy Marriage Initiative, a grant program that promotes marriage as a way to end dependence by needy families on government benefits. It specifically aims to prevent out-of-wedlock births. John Brown University in Siloam Springs, a private Christian institution, runs the only grant-funded program in Arkansas, according to documents from the federal Administration for Children & Families. JBU’s program is not directed specifically at Hispanics or outof-wedlock births. But the federal healthy-marriage program does go to pains to reach Hispanics. Among Uncle Sam’s tips for nonprofit and faith-based groups getting federal grants for Hispanic-focused programs: “Reach out to men and highlight the positive elements of ‘ machismo ’” and “use phrases such as strong couples and healthy marriages are the foundation of a vibrant family.”

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The beatings will continue until morale improves?

[Impugn]

These babies should not be citizens. Legislating against that would remove at least one incentive.

If we make the jobs dry up and stop providing tax-payer-funded services to these tards, they’ll go back and try to make something positive out of their own crap countries.