Carlos Pereira grinned widely as he stood in the outgoing tide of newly sworn-in citizens leaving a Miami naturalization ceremony. So far, he had registered 328 people, mostly from Latin American countries. Only 62 of them were from Cuba.

”This year is exceptional because there is so much diversity,” said Pereira, a native of Honduras who heads the Miami-based Center for Immigrant Orientation. “This change is exciting because it will bring a diversity to political power.”

The trend that Pereira sees in the voter registration trenches mirrors the one pollsters are seeing statewide: There is a new Hispanic majority in Florida, and it is not Cuban.

According to numbers from the Democratic polling firm Bendixen and Associates, 44 percent of the state’s 1.1 million Hispanic voters hail from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries — slightly more than the Cubans, at 40 percent. In 2000, non-Cuban voters represented 19 percent of the Hispanic vote, Bendixen polling shows.

Hispanic Democrats also now outnumber Hispanic Republicans in Florida, making what had long been a relatively predictable voter population for politicians much more fluid.

”In order to survive here, candidates are going to have to keep the Cuban line, but also have to increasingly appeal to the non-Cuban Hispanics by catering to their issues,” said Florida International University pollster Dario Moreno.

The newcomers, many of them just entering the U.S. political fray, are poised to exert unprecedented influence in this election year as the unquestioned dominance of the traditionally Republican Cuban voting block begins to wane.

”Over the last 10 years, there have been significant voter registration efforts targeting these groups, and we’re seeing dividends of that at the ballot box,” said Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Associates, which recently signed on to do polling work for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. “They are going to continue to assert themselves politically and to influence elections on local, state and national level for years to come.”

Despite their growing might in numbers, these other Hispanic voting communities are a political unknown. Although many are registering as Democrats, there are certain issues related to their homelands that may lead them to vote differently than their new voter registration cards suggest.

ISSUE OF FREE TRADE

One such issue is the free-trade agreement with Colombia — supported by congressional Republicans and stalled by Democrats — which is pushing many Colombian-American Democrats to question their party affiliation.

The non-Cuban Hispanic voters are in varying stages of local political organization. Many of them — including Colombians, Venezuelans and Dominicans — have organizations agitating for more political power.

The Dominican community has a sophisticated network of political operators strategically placed across the state, with phone banks that marshal 30 volunteers to call likely voters. They organize political caravans that wind through South Florida neighborhoods.

The problem, according to many local Dominican activists: Their energy is focused on the wrong elections.

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Popularity: 48% [?]

The announcement on Thursday that minorities collectively will make up a majority of people in America by 2042 comes at a contentious moment in U.S. history. A bitter and largely negative debate about immigration roils the country. Stoked by angry politicians, the shouting rarely goes beyond variations on the theme of how to send 12 million illegal immigrants back home. Hardly anybody acknowledges that 38 million legal immigrants and their 31 million children already call America home. These people, along with other minorities, will be a powerful force in shaping America’s future.

Word to the wise: The future is here; get used to it. The changing demographics and the story that they tell are cause for pride, not panic. America is growing richer in its diversity: Immigrants and minorities will continue to assimilate into the U.S. culture, just as they always have. They will bring fresh ideas, new perspectives, energy and vitality with them.

The census update says that non-Hispanic whites will make up less than half of the U.S. population by 2042, about nine years earlier than previously predicted. The change will be largely driven by Hispanics, whose numbers will nearly triple to 133 million, or about 30 percent of the 2042 population. Asians will nearly double to 9 percent of the population, compared to 5 percent today. Blacks will increase slightly to 15 percent from 13 percent. And far more people will identify themselves as mixed-race, up to 16 percent from 4 percent.

Immigration will continue to contribute to the increasing diversity, but the numbers are mostly being driven by birth and death ratios. Non-Hispanic whites are older, dying more and having fewer babies. Hispanics are younger and, consequently, producing more babies.

What does it all mean? For those of us in South Florida, Los Angeles, parts of Texas and other places, the future America looks like our present. As we have, America will learn how to work, play, educate, build, love, fight and celebrate across ethnic and racial lines. The country will learn to vote using multi-language ballots, decipher cultural differences in medical care, teach children in many languages, make justice equal for all.

Anyone who fears the change that is coming should understand that our country has been in a constant state of flux since it was founded, embracing British, Italians, Irish, Jews, Africans, Spanish, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians and others. Diversity has made America strong, current proof of which is on display at the Beijing Olympics. We should continue to welcome and embrace it.

Source The Miami Herald

Popularity: 38% [?]

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050.

The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. Another factor is the influx of foreigners, rising from about 1.3 million annually today to more than 2 million a year by midcentury, according to projections based on current immigration policies.

“No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change,” said Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization in Washington.

The latest figures, which are being released on Thursday, are predicated on current and historical trends, which can be thrown awry by several variables, including prospective overhauls of immigration policies and sudden increases in refugees.

A decade ago, census demographers estimated that the nation’s population, which topped 300 million in 2006, would not surpass 400 million until sometime after midcentury. Now, they are projecting that the population will top 400 million in 2039 and reach 439 million in 2050.

So-called minorities, the Census Bureau projects, will constitute a majority of the nation’s children under 18 by 2023 and of working-age Americans by 2039.

For the first time, both the number and the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, who now account for 66 percent of the population, will decline, starting around 2030. By 2050, their share will dip to 46 percent.

Higher mortality rates among older native-born white Americans and higher birthrates rates among immigrants and their children are already driving ethnic and racial disparities.

“A momentum is built into this as a result of past immigration,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, there were more Hispanic immigrants than births. This decade, there are more births than immigrants. Almost regardless of what you assume about future immigration, the country will be more Hispanic and Asian.”

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Popularity: 55% [?]

Foreshadowing the nation’s changing makeup, one in four American counties have passed or are approaching the tipping point where black, Hispanic and Asian children constitute a majority of the under-20 population, according to analyses of census figures released Thursday.

Racial and ethnic minorities now account for 43 percent of Americans under 20. Among people of all ages, minorities make up at least 40 percent of the population in more than one in six of the nation’s 3,141 counties.

The latest population changes by race, ethnicity and age, as of July 1, 2007, were generally marginal compared with the year before. But they confirm the breadth of the nation’s diversity, and suggest that minorities — now about a third of the population — might constitute a majority of all Americans even sooner than projected by census demographers, in 2050.

In 2000, black, Hispanic and Asian children under age 20 were at or near a majority in only about one-fifth of the counties and, over all, blacks, Hispanics and Asians accounted for 40 percent or more of the population in about one in seven counties.

Even with the growing diversity, all but one of the 82 counties where blacks make up a majority are in the South (except St. Louis), all but two of the 46 where Hispanics are in the majority are in the South or the West (except the Bronx and Seward, Kan., home to giant meatpacking plants), and four of the five counties with the largest proportion of Asians are in Hawaii (San Francisco rounds out the top five with 33 percent).

Except for two counties in New Mexico and South Dakota with large American Indian populations, the 10 counties with the highest proportion of minorities were along or near the Mexican border.

From 2006 to 2007, according to the bureau’s revised estimates, the counties that became majority-minority included Rockdale, near Atlanta.

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Popularity: 50% [?]

In today’s wacky dessert world, in which paying $3 for a dolled-up cupcake is de rigueur, the next hot thing actually is a humble snack with a storied tradition: churros.

Spurred by an explosion of interest in all things Latino, the fried batons of dough — traditionally sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar — are popping up on menus across the country. When the president’s daughter serves churros at her wedding, it’s probably safe to say they have hit the mainstream.

Jenna Bush definitely is not alone. Entrepreneurs and big-name chefs have hopped onto the bandwagon, too, and have pushed this modest, deep-fried snack into the spotlight.

These days you can find churros on menus from coast to coast, from West LA’s well-loved Literati 2 (helmed by Chris Kidder, formerly of Campanile) to New York’s trendy Dos Caminos.

Churros are believed to have their origins in Spain, though they’re also extremely popular in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, where they’re found at street carts, markets and cafes.

The key to their appeal is their distinctive ridges, achieved with the help of a churrera , an extruder with a star-shape attachment. When the thick batter is pressed and dropped into boiling-hot oil, each ridge fries up wonderfully crisp, giving the churro its texture — crunchy on the outside, soft and almost creamy inside.

A number of businesses have sprung up to accommodate the booming interest in the U.S.

“Five years ago, there were lots and lots of people who’d never heard of a churro, and many of the people who did know what one was had had one at Disneyland or at a ballpark,” said Melanie Farkas, the owner of the 5-year-old Churro Station franchise based in San Rafael, Calif.

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Popularity: 63% [?]

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The Hispanic population is experiencing non-stop growth here in the valley and nationwide. But it’s not because of immigration. Here in Las Vegas, according to this year’s Las Vegas Perspective, the Hispanic population is at 26-percent.

But that number is growing every day. It’s a natural increase because it’s now births that are accounting for most of the nation’s Hispanic population, not immigration.

Twenty years ago, motherhood led Heidi Herrera from Mexico, to the United States. “It was a choice because we didn’t want out kids to go through what we did. We wanted for them to have a better life, a better education.”

Today, her three children are adding to what many are calling “the Hispanic baby boom.”

“It’s a misconception that people come in, have their kids and go back to Mexico and whenever they’re older, just come over to the United States,” she said.

In seven years, the Hispanic population grew by more than 10 million people. This natural increase is something Hispanic advocate Miguel Barrientos says should come as no surprise.

“It’s a natural thing that’s happening. The Census Bureau has indicated in the year 2050, 50-percent of the population in U.S. will be Latino. This is the beginning stage of that phenomenal growth that will take place in the country,” he said.

Popularity: 85% [?]