Travis County Commissioners Court
June 5, 2007
Item 4
Number 4
>> since we have you there.
>> yes, sir.
>> why don't we seek the presentation on 2006-2007 Travis County immigrants in item number 4.
>> thank you, judge. As our guests take their seats, our intent today is to give the court a formal presentation, a brief formal presentation, on the Travis County immigrant assessment as prepared by the research and planning division of health and human services and in conjunction with all of the partners and many, many other individuals who couldn't be with us here today but have been a tremendous support to helping us gather some very important information about our community. I have seated here with me to my left cynthia cobert, executive director of catholic charities, chris jimmer son, executive director of political asylum project of Austin, captain c cardenis was with us here, but he was not able to stay. He is with us in spirit. Also thomas asparza, an attorney with immigrant issues here in Travis County county. Next to mr. Asparza is anna almagel and cory darling from research and planning division.
>> welcome to all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> good morning, we have a powerpoint that we'd like to be up.
>> can we help with the powerpoint?
>> thank you very much.
>> there you go. Thank you.
>> the question is the assessment process right now now. The demographics change in Travis County has been significant from 1990 to 2005, the foreign born population grew about 230 percent. In 1990 the population was 45,000, in 2005 it was 108 108,000 rest dental. Stakeholders discovered a common interest to explore needs and conditions for residents foreign born. Our strong stakeholders that took the charge were catholic charities of send tras tech a the city of Austin commission on immigrant affairs, the community action network, and Travis County health and human service research and planning. In 2005, by the way, the foreign born population in was 1 percent of our population. What is the goal of the process? Develop a process and create a product, accurate, balanc balanced and increwsive. Research and planning division stewarded the process, conducting primary and secondary research. Secondary research is traditional academic research, a lit review, data source, coming up with a conclusion. Primary research highlights the assessment as one that included the community. We had 18 focus groups. We went and met with folks from the community that are immigrants in the community. We also had a service provider forum with providers of services to immigrants in the community. The assessment process, explorers the specific issues, the areas included are profile of foreign born in Travis County, which is basically demographic, immigration policy, process and legal rights, public safety, economic safety net, housing, education, and workforce. There's no one definition for the term immigrant. It crosses all sources and all issues am for the purposes of this assessment we adapted the working definition from the u.s. Census. In our definition an imgrant is anyone not an u.s. Citizen or u.s. National by birth. Thus for purposes of this assessment the term I want grant is sin on must sñrb-- sñrb--synonymous with foreign born. Born.. The goals of each section were to describe the characteristics of Travis County's foreign born population. To provide a picture of national trends vis-a-vis vis-a-visgrant issues, consider the relative well being of residents went context of the community's goals, and to include the experiences and perper. We wanted to know certain questions. How has the immigrant population grown, where do immigrants originate from, and what languages do they speak, where do they fall in the economic and educational attainment spectrum, where do immigrants live in Travis County. Here we give a broad picture and within each issue area, these are the types of questions that frame each section of the report and the type of neutral information provided. Travis County's population as a whole has experienced considerable growth in recent years, the foreign born population has grown faster than the native born population. Ation the table shows, the foreign born population grew by almost 230 percent between 1990 and 2005. Currently the majority of the immigrants living in Travis County arrived in the u.s. In or after the year 1990. In 2005 about half of the immigrants living in Travis County were born in mexico. That is about 76,000. About one quarter come from asia. The rest of our immigrant population is diverse, coming from different world regions. The imgrant population in Travis County is more diverse than the immigrant population in Texas but less diverse than that of the united states overall. 32 percent, I love this slide, just incredible. 32 percent of Travis County residents, roughly 254,000 residents of Travis County, speak a long other than english at home. 79 percent of them speak english, 12 percent speak asian and pacific islander languages. It should be noted that the majority, 59 percent, speak english very well as well. Socio economic status describes one's relative position in society determine by the interplay of multiple factors. In in slide and the following, two are explored, income and education. In Travis County immigrants are represented across the income spectrum. However, they are more heavily represented among the lower income groups. Immigrants are also represented at all levels of education attainment. It should be note that had to the far right of the bar graph, 15 percent of Travis County immigrants have graduate or professional dreagedegrees, which is a-- a--degrees. The rest is represented by the lower educational attain attainment levels. This is a map that shows the concentration of immigrant residents by zip code in Travis County. Just wanted to highlight that the darkest area zip codes are where 25 percent of the residents living in that zip code are foreign born. The brighter yellow areas are zip codes in which 10-19 percent of residents living within that zip code are foreign born. This is information derived from the analysis of 2000 census data. We'll have data from the census, 2010 den sus, to look at when that is available. In summary, there are some overarching themes that we saw. Immigrants are part of an impact that Travis County community, their success and well being is tide to the long-term prosperity of the entire community. The community's task is to ensure health, safety and well being of all residents. To do so requires a holistic approach that includes im imgrñnts and immigration related issues. Travis County's immigrants exhibit diversity in culture socio economic characteristics and experiences in the u.s. Him grantsgrants immigrants vary by country of origin, languages spoken, reasons for immigration, cultural norms and values, how long they have lived here, some yas economic stat u skills, et cetera. There's a unique interplay. One size does not fit all. Have you to take the inner play into account in solution some immigrant populations have greater needs linked to both economic and immigration related characteristics. The barriers immigrants experience may be immigrant related, economic, or a combination of bothlve lve both. It's it's--hard to say this is the problem for everybody everybody. Just they exist. Federal and state towards often disagree, anyone reading the paper can see, on how is responsible for the immigrant issuement you might ask what is next. We're offering questions to spark a dialogue. Conclusion section of the report offers many questions to the communities to consider and discuss. We are inviting the community to reflect on this information and construct their own responses. We have development a forum for June 29, plans still in stages. We thank our sponsors who have supported us in the project. We would like some of our steering committee members to share comments with you.
>> hi, I'm from catholic chair tis, executive director. As nonprofit social services in the county as well as faith based provider, we work with immigrants from all walks and provide them with services including immigrant legal service. We appreciate the diversity and richness of our community and know that immigrants are an important part of our communities. This study will help us not just as nonprofits social service providers but also the faith based community to help come together and identify ways to that we can streamline services and really help immigrants embrace the life they have here in the united states and certainly in Travis County. In our teaching and denomination we talk about work forg--working for the common good. That is our goal in working with immigrants. Thank you to county staff for their process and the ability to work with them and all the partners at the table. We look forward to the dialogue and work coming out of this study.
>> chris jefferson with political asylum of Austin, also a flun profit working with legal issues with immigrants on a daily basis. I want to expression great appreciation to the county, the Commissioners and to especially the folk at research and planning for this terrific work as we all know at the federal level right now, there is a huge debate going on on what is going to happen, if anything, with immigration law reform in this country. No matter what they do, whether they do reform the law or whether they leave it the way it is, that is going to have profound consequence consequences for both the public sector and the private sector providing health and human service as well as legal services in our area, toon have a document like this so that we are ready to respond to help folks when we find out what they do at the federal level, is just something that I think is unique in the entire country. Again our thanks for the hard work.
>> thank you.
>> my name is thomas sparza sparza--chairman for the on onstin commission on immigrants affairs. I've been a lawyer here in Travis County almost 30 I'd like to say what a wonderful experience I'd been to participate in a one of a kind detailed research study into the demographics of the foreign born population here in Travis County. The immigration laws are going to change, though I've stopped reading the day-to-day amendments pro and con, I'm going to wait until the house gets a hold of the senate bill to see what happens Travis County is in a unique position of all the counties in the united states, to be ready to respond. In every budget within the city and within Travis County, even, I tend to use this for grant writing for the south Austin little league baseball. This is a unique document, a unique study that I think will allow Travis County to be better prepared to respond to probably the last significant immigration legislation in my career. I think Travis County research and planning is to be commended. They put in dozens of hours of work. All the stakeholders, we are just a representative group of stakeholders, also need to be commended for participating.
>> thank you.
>> I would like to conclude by saying that the report is now available and actually we understand that it may not be available until actually tomorrow from our website. But it will be downloadable. You can read it, you can review the information, the charts and all of the information is accessible and available to the community. We certainly want to thank a very diverse and hard working steering committee who was with us from the beginning of this process last year, as well as all through the writing and even some of the questions about when it was going to be released and how soon can we get our hands on it. And everyone was just so cooperative and participated so well with staff and supported us through a process in the context of what was going on, I guess, on the national stage. So we certainly appreciate everyone who supported us but mostly appreciate the residents who took a chance on us and participated in very candid cy log about experiences here in Travis County and I think all of our policy decisions and grant applications and everything that we do for the benefit of the residents of Travis County will be informed by this process. So I do want to thank everyone for their participation I think the steering committee mess would like like--members would like to present you now with your officially copy.
>> I want to make a quick comment that I appreciate this work coming from a not from the perspective of immigrant as a problem but as an opportunity to reframe ourselves as an international community. I appreciate that.
>> as a product of foreign born parents, I think I can say that folks come here because this is the land of opportunity. And so, people from other countries view the united states as still a country that has the ideals that were expressed long ago. And so we hope that they are able to freshen our view of what the united states stands for as well. A lot of these folks don't come here for a handout. They come because of their own public safety, of their wanting to raise a family, to get an education, and to become a contributing citizen of the united states which they really hold in high esteem. I think americans can benefit from seeing what our constitution is about and having it become a live document again in their children's lives. I think that we can all benefit from that kind of view of the united states. Thank you.
>> you've been provided two copies.
>> what we received today was really for an overview. This has a lot more detail.
>> will this be included in the efforts to do the opportunity mapping with the indicators project ?
>> we certainly will be sharing the report with all of our partners who do similar work. So I would assume that it will inform their process as well.
>> great.
>> one goal today is for the Commissioners court and Travis County residents to be informed by the immigrant assessment.
>> yeswhat are the other goals?
>> the goal is to make the community aware that there is now what I would describe as academic information about our population available. Newly updated information, that can be used to look at programming, to look at decisions that are made about service delivery in our community, and to be able to frame it in the context of actual data as opposed to making decisions on what we would describe as anecdotal information. So we would like to have this document freely available for people who would like to know what the context of the immigrant population is in Travis County and what their needs and contributions are to our community.
>> sherry, I want to appreciate taking the recommendation that I made as far as indicating by map the depiction here in your presentation. I think it goes a long way to kind of mirror exactly what we are talking about as far as map-wise in Travis County. So thank you for including that suggestion that was brought up, to make sure we get a clear picture. I think it goes a long way to show what you are doing. So thank you for inputting that.
>> thank you for your hard work.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for visiting with us today.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 8:00 AM