Census puts state’s count of Marshallese above 4,300
The number of Marshall Islanders living in the United States tripled from 2000 to 2010, with one in five living in Arkansas by 2010, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Arkansas has the nation’s second largest population of Marshallese residents, behind only Hawaii, according to the report, with more than 4,300 Marshallese residents living in Arkansas in 2010.
The report focuses on the nation’s population of Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders, which includes residents from the Marshall Islands.
Roughly 7,400 Marshallese lived in Hawaii, and about 2,200 lived in Washington, according to census figures.
Lindsay Hixson, lead author of the new census report, said the 2010 Census figures show large concentrations of growth in the Marshallese population in counties in southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas, with Benton and Washington counties showing a 200 percent or more increase since 2000 in their populations of native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders, which are primarily Marshallese.
The percentage of the Washington County population that was native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander was 2.2 percent, ranking sixth highest in the nation, according to the data.
“The growth of the Marshallese population could be attributed to the Federated States of Micronesia’s compact of free association with the U.S., implemented in 1986, which granted its citizens free access to the U.S. and its territories and created new opportunities for Micronesians who had been allowed in the U.S. for schooling but not for employment,” Hixson said.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands is one of three Pacific Island nations that have agreements with the United States — known as Compacts of Free Association — that permit island citizens to migrate to the United States and its territories without visa or labor certification requirements. The compacts involve the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.
Other factors for the increase include births, deaths, the migration in and out of geographic areas and changes to the census form that could have resulted in more residents reporting being Marshallese, the researchers said.
More than 1.2 million native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders live in the United States, an increase of 40.1 percent from 2000 to 2010, said Nicholas Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s racial statistics branch. The native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population was the nation’s second fastest growing racial group over the decade, behind the Asian population. However, the native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander racial group makes up less than 1 percent of the nation’s population of 308.7 million.
More than half of the nation’s population of native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders lived in Hawaii and California.
The increasing number of Marshall Islanders didn’t surprise Sandy Hainline williams, outreach coordinator for the Dr. Joseph Bates Outreach Clinic in Springdale. In 2000, Springdale had a low unemployment rate that offered more opportunities for residents of the Marshall Islands who were experiencing profound poverty, a financial crisis, an unemployment rate of 40 percent and rapid population growth.
“We had a job for everybody who could get to the building to work,” HainlineWilliams said.
Companies such as poultry producer Tyson Foods Inc. provided jobs that didn’t require much English and paid well, far above the $2per-hour minimum wage in the Marshall Islands, Hainline williams said.
In Arkansas, the Marshallese population lived in 19 cities in 2010, but 86 percent of them lived in Springdale alone, according to the 2010 Census figures. Other cities with significant clusters of Marshallese residents were Bethel Heights (located between Springdale and Lowell in Benton County) with 194 Marshallese residents, Fayetteville with 103 and Rogers with 98.