Anchorage Daily News

People of Anchorage look a lot different from the way they did 10 years ago, and more change is coming.

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A growing number of young minorities are moving to Anchorage, many of them not prepared to sustain the city's work force, while a large number of baby boomers are about to retire, according to the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

ISER director Fran Ulmer and Anchorage School District Superintendent Carol Comeau discussed a report on the changing demographics of Anchorage and how it's affecting the community at a Diversity Week lunchtime presentation Thursday.

They spoke to a standing-room-only, mostly white and middle-aged crowd in a conference room at City Hall. An exception was Guadalupe Marroquin, a city employee who is from Michigan and has Mexican parents.

She said Anchorage has become more fun and interesting.

"I've been here 30 years. When I first got here, it was like, where is everybody? There weren't a lot of Mexicans around," she said. "Now, I have a whole community of Hispanics and Samoans and all kinds of people around me."

She's not the only Marroquin in the phone book anymore. Hispanic groups gather for festivals, religious ceremonies, dances. They've got their own Spanish radio shows and run Mexican restaurants.

"We've started to coalesce into groups that want to celebrate culture and perpetuate it," she said. "It makes me love (Anchorage) even more."

Anchorage's increased diversity is largely driven by immigration, Ulmer said.

Alaska Natives remain the largest minority group in Anchorage, followed by Asians and blacks. But the Pacific Islands, the Philippines and Mexico accounted for a third of international immigrants in the late 1990s.

Of all immigrants to Anchorage between 1995 and 2000, 16 percent are from Samoa, Guam and other Pacific islands, 11 percent are from the Philippines and 9 percent are from Mexico.

No single reason explains the attraction for immigrants, though federal laws and programs determine where refugees settle -- such as the Hmong influx from Southeast Asia.

Relatively low crime, crowding and pollution were cited as attractions. And many probably come because Anchorage has lower taxes plus Permanent Fund dividends, the report said. Often, once a particular group is seeded, more from that culture follow.

But Ulmer said most come for jobs. Anchorage has had steady job growth for more than a decade, according to the report.

Despite this, the younger minorities face a tough job market, Ulmer said.

It's become harder to earn good living now in Anchorage without a college education, she said.

Of various groups making up Anchorage in 2000, white people made the most money, had the most education and were the oldest, according to the report, which is based on census data. Pacific Islanders were the youngest and, along with Natives, the poorest; along with Natives and Asians, Pacific Islanders were the least educated.

Damito Owen, who works for the Anchorage Literacy Project, said she came to the event to see if the report matched what she sees in her job teaching reading to a large number of minorities. It did.

Minorities need more education with basic reading and writing skills, employment training and access to jobs that may be coming available as the baby boomers retire, she said, repeating themes spoken by Ulmer. The city needs a community college, Owen said, especially as university tuitions rise.

Owen, a black woman, was born in Anchorage and raised between here and California. She returned three years ago. She's noticed a change and welcomes it.

When she was in junior high, there were only a couple of minorities in her classes. Now, her elementary-school-age son shares a classroom with more like faces. But she'd like to see more diversity in the teachers and the administration, she said.

"We need more educators who look like our students," Comeau agreed. She said the district is working on that.

The schools also need more cultural clubs and diversity training, she said, especially since the minority populations are not spread evenly. They're concentrated where there's affordable housing, she said, so schools on the Hillside, for example, tend to have fewer nonwhite students.

Racial or ethnic minority populations in the schools have grown 1 percent to 2 percent a year and now make up 44 percent of students. Soon, they'll constitute 50 percent of students, she said.

Comeau said 96 languages are spoken in the schools. Of the 13 percent of students who speak a language other than English as their first language, most spoke Spanish, followed by Tagalog, a language from the Philippines, Samoan from the Pacific Islands and Hmong.

"It's a very different community than it was when I started in the district 31 years ago," Comeau said.

Daily News reporter Anne Aurand can be reached at aaurand@adn.com or 257-4591.