Participation :: essays papers

Participation When the McDonalds patron in suburban Johnson County ordered a coffee and got a Coke, he came face to face with a middle west tire pool truth. Non-English-speaking immigrants are an increasingly large part of the labor force -- not just in the Sun Belt states besides in the upper Midwest as well. The fast-food worker, who spoke Spanish and had anxiety understanding the mans order, was one of tens of thousands of Hispanics who entered the Midwest job market in the departed decade. Without them, economists say, the long-running labor shortage, particularly in entry-level jobs, would be even more monstrous than it is. For round business patrons, the immigrant influx means occasional difficulties in communication. For some business owners, immigrant labor -- both documented and undocumented -- is the only focal point to fill jobs that otherwise would go begging. The most recent measure of unemployment in the Kansas City area, taken in May, was 2.8 percent. Miss ouris jobless consider was 2.6 percent Kansas rate was 3.2 percent. Unemployment throughout the Midwest is well below 5.5 percent, which is considered full employment. Michael Barrera, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City, said the chamber had charted an explosive festering in the metropolitan areas Hispanic, blue-collar, minimum-wage work force, especially in Olathe and northeast Kansas City. Also, Barrera said, the mid-nineties brought a large increase in the number of entrepreneurial Hispanic immigrants, seen particularly in the blossoming of small stores and restaurants in Kansas City, Kan., and northeast Kansas City. The Hispanic chamber has no estimate of the size of the areas Hispanic work force, further Barrera said the Hispanic population may have grown to as many as 100,000, up from 58,000 in 1996. Throughout the Midwest, Hispanic immigrants are finding work. Census data, updated in 1998, found that 220,000 workers in the West nitrogen C entral states were of Hispanic origin, up from 93,000 10 years earlier. The Census business office defines the West northwestern Central region as Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. Similar findings were reported last week by the Bureau of depicted object Affairs Inc. in its Daily Labor Report 2000 Regional sentry on Labor Markets. The dressing table said Illinois now had the nations fifth-largest Hispanic population, the highest rank among states not in the Sun Belt. In Illinois and the other Midwest states, the bureau said, Hispanic immigrants are working in construction, restaurants, small manufacturing and farming.