Louisville, Kentucky USA - by the Courier-Journal newspaper, July 16, 2013: IMMIGRANTS FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES LEAD WAY Newcomers boost Louisville’s growth By Marcus Green magreen@courier-journal The Courier-Journal Mary Thorsby thought her move to Louisville in 2010 would be temporary — she was looking only to expand an entertainment website she’d helped start in Paducah. But she’s since “fallen in love” with the city and is staying, having started in an master’s in business administration program at the University of Louisville. “I got there at such an exciting time, and it’s still going on,” she said. Louisville’s population growth relies increasingly on people such as Thorsby coming from elsewhere, according to new Census Bureau estimates. Migration — the total of newcomers minus people who leave town — accounted for about 17 percent of the city’s growth during the 2000s, but it jumped to 30 percent from 2010 to 2012, data show. And that matters, because deaths are on track to outnumber births in the coming years as baby boomers age, said Ron Crouch, director of research and statistics for the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. As Congress debates new immigration measures, the vast majority of Louisville’s newcomers have been people coming from foreign countries and soldiers and other citizens returning from overseas. The city added about 3,870 international migrants from 2010 to 2012. “We have been consistently gain¬ ing from this international stream for some time now,” said Michael Price, state demographer at the Kentucky State Data Center. “It’s kind of the bread and butter of our growth.” There were nearly 6,000 students in Jefferson County Public Schools in the recent school year who were not native English speakers, up more than 6 percent from the previous year, said Marti Kinny, coordinator for the district’s English as a Second Language program. Kinny said the school system’s growth is closely tied to refugee resettlement by such groups as Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Catholic Charities. Slightly more than half of the students learning English speak Spanish — a group that includes Cuban refugees — followed by Somali speakers, she said. About 150 countries are represented in the 2,000-member Greater Louisville International Professionals, according to Greater Louisville Inc., the metro area chamber of commerce Having a diverse population matters to the city’s economic growth, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said. He cited a 2012 Small Business Administration report showing that immigrants have higher business ownership rates than do people born in the U.S. “We’ve got to be a great international city so our kids can grow up in a global world, so our businesses can export to the maximum,” Fischer said. Overall, Census estimates show that Louisville remains largely white — non-Hispanic whites made up more than 70 percent of the city’s population in 2012, down less than a percentage point from 2010. But the fastest growing segments of the city’s population were Hispanics, which increased 7 percent; Asians, up 6 percent; and non-Hispanic blacks, which climbed 2 percent. Like Louisville, Kentucky lost people to other states from 2010 to 2012 but had a net gain of new residents who moved in, because of a surge in the international migrants. Toward the end of the 2000s Louisville’s gains were largely a result of fewer people leaving town, a trend demographer Price suspected was caused by a lack of opportunities in other cities as the recession was at its worst. “We weren’t sending people away during a recession when there were less jobs elsewhere,” he said. Indiana’s overall population continues to grow, but a net loss of about 5,500 migrants is a “troubling indicator,” said Matt Kinghorn, demographer at the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Kinghorn said migration trends are tied closely to the economy, and Indiana’s population is growing at its slowest pace since the mid-1980s. Indiana’s population growth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year last year, according to Census estimates analyzed by the research center. Indiana added 20,981 people from 2011 to 2012 — a 0.3 percent climb that was the smallest annual increase since 1986. “The hope is that over the next few years ... we can get the economy moving again, and we can again attract residents to the state,” he said. After graduating from Indiana University in 2005, Russellville, Ky., native Chelsea Kotrla lived and worked in Bloomington, Ind., for about four years before she visited Austin, Texas, for her job. She eventually asked her employer, a food-delivery company, for a transfer there. “When I came to Austin, it was like Bloomington — but it was on a larger scale,” Kotrla, president of the Austin chapter of IU’s Alumni Association, said in a phone interview. Thorsby compares Louisville to another city — her native San Francisco. In particular, she likes the city’s “entrepreneurial energy,” the Nu-Lu district east of downtown and such restaurants as Rye, Proof and Seviche. “I absolutely love Louisville,” she said. “It reminds me in many ways of San Francisco.” Reporter Marcus Green can be reached at (502) 582-4675.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 18:01:41 +0000
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