Status of Hispanic Kentuckians Key to Future
From Foresight, Vol. 8, No.4; published 2002

 An increasing population of immigrants is making the Bluegrass their home. They not only come from cities and towns in Mexico but from parts of Central and South America, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. They work in tobacco fields, on horse and cattle farms and in poultry-processing plants, hotels and restaurants, car washes, fast-food kitchens, and landscaping businesses, among other things. Hispanics are now an integral part of our economy.

 But many of Kentucky’s Hispanics, Kentucky Monthly reports, cannot read or write. Some sleep in cramped trailers or in tiny, windowless rooms with half a dozen or more to studio-sized apartments. Many cannot drive. Some get arrested for crimes they don’t even know they are committing and cannot articulate a defense of Others are robbed of wads of cash carried in their pockets because they cannot or fear to open bank accounts.

 Yet at the same time, increasing numbers of Hispanics in Kentucky are paying rent in larger apartments or buying homes, if not businesses, completing English-as-a-Second-Language programs, and becoming managers on farms or in businesses that once, at best, hired low-wage Hispanics as workers. A sprinkling of Hispanics though generally not first-generation migrants are practicing attorneys, physicians, or academics across the state.

 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were just 4,461 Hispanic residents in Fayette and its surrounding counties—Bourbon, Clark, Jessamine, Madison, Scott, and Woodford in 1996. But that number does not include those migrants who are undocumented. By most estimates, the figure is currently somewhere above 30,000, a dramatic contrast to the mere 3,347 Hispanics registered in the area in 1990 when migration was relatively low.

 Migrants make up much of Kentucky’s farm labor force. The state estimates that between 70 and 80 percent of Kentucky’s 25,000 tobacco workers are Hispanic. The horse industry, which employs thousands of Hispanic workers on scores of farms across the Commonwealth, last year began a program of teaching not only English as a second language, but Spanish as a second language, said David Switzer, executive director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association. The Lexington Hispanic Association, for the past eight years, has been active in seeking jobs, housing, education, legal help, and medical care for Hispanics in the Bluegrass region.

Potential Implications for Kentucky

Hispanic immigrants are clearly a part of Kentucky’s future. Some portion of today’s migrant workers will be tomorrow’s citizens of the Commonwealth. Consequently, their educational status and thus their ability to contribute to our state and its communities is key to the future. In the years to come, the work of groups like the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association and many

others will repay the Commonwealth with the presence of greater numbers of successful Hispanic entrepreneurs, who will in turn become employers, consumers, and participants in the betterment of our state. Today, Hispanic workers are the lifeblood of Kentucky’s expansive agricultural economy and an integral part of many of its businesses. Tomorrow, Hispanic businesses could be an economic engine.