Day by day, year by year, residents noticed changes throughout Manassas Park and neighboring Prince William County and Manassas City.
When a U.S. Census report announced Thursday that the rapid rise in the local Hispanic population boosted the number of minority residents over whites in Manassas Park and nearly so in neighboring jurisdictions, it confirmed what residents already knew.
The Hispanic population grows every year as more people arrive to work in the bustling suburban construction industry, Marco Blacutt said at El Mercado Hispano Southwestern Grocery in Manassas Park.
“That’s certainly no surprise to school people,” Manassas City Public Schools Superintendent Tom DeBolt said. “We know the trends before everyone else.”
And what he has witnessed in Manassas Park over the last dozen years is a “dramatic” change in the makeup of the student population.
“Twelve years ago, we had one set of demographics, and today we have quite a different set,” DeBolt said. “The Latino percentage has grown dramatically” from an estimated 6 percent in 1995 to 48 percent this fall.
DeBolt said the students teachers serve have changed so significantly, the education model was forced to change with it to emphasize language skills. But the number of new residents who do not speak English is a concern to some area residents, like Shirley Kossoy, of Haymarket, who has not been able to communicate with store employees in English on multiple occasions, like one evening when she asked what time a McDonald’s closed.
“We are a nation of immigrants,” Kossoy said. “But I wonder if there is a better way to improve the language skills.”
A growing tension between whites and Hispanics in the community may lead to another shift soon. Prince William County passed an immigration resolution recently seeking to restrict some services to legal residents only and encouraging police to deport illegal immigrants.
Anti-illegal immigration activists hailed the move as a long-needed response to a national problem, while immigrant supporters decried it as a policy designed to force Hispanics out.
