By: The Gonzales Group | Published: September 2007

U.S. Census data was released in September 2007, which found that the Mexican population in the United States climbed 37 percent between 2000 and 2006, with Pennsylvania and New Jersey substantially outpacing the national trend. The Mexican population jumped 74 percent, though all Hispanics, including Mexicans, make up only 6 percent of the region's total population.

The census data, based on an annual survey of three million households known as the American Community Survey, do not distinguish between documented and undocumented immigrants.

Dialing the microscope down on Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, an Inquirer analysis found:

In Bucks County, the Mexican population more than doubled since 2000, from about 3,000 to nearly 7,000, and Mexicans now make up 35 percent of all Hispanics in the county.

While the overall population of Philadelphia declined by nearly 70,000 people, the Hispanic population grew by more than 22,000, to 151,000.

In the city of Camden, which has long had a substantial Hispanic population, the levels were unchanged at about 30,000, while the Hispanic population of Camden County grew by 11,000.

Nearly six in 10 Hispanics in the region are Puerto Rican, down slightly as the number of Mexicans has increased.

In addition to Puerto Rican-made Bacardi rum at the bar, beverages include Mexican beer and Jarritos, the fruit-flavored soft drink popular among Mexicans. "The Hispanic population overall is a very youthful population, in its 20s and 30s, in other words, in their peak reproduction years," said Ruben Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine and national expert on Mexican migration.

The higher-than-average birth rate among Hispanics may account for some of the growth locally. In Montgomery County, for example, the median age of Hispanics is 26 compared with 40 for the entire population.

In Chester County, the Rev. Frank Depman of Mission Santa Maria, the Roman Catholic-affiliated multiservice center in Avondale, is seeing the trend, too. He performs about 400 baptisms a year of children born to Mexican parents.

"Immigration is putting a lot of stress on our society, but at the same time it is creating a lot of good. A lot of the economic development in the country comes from this workforce," he said.

And with the aging of the long-dominant Puerto Rican population, he said, the Mexican influence in his county is growing. "Almost all the stores ... are stocking Mexican items," he said. "You have a couple of stores run by Puerto Ricans, but not too many left at this point."

Rumbaut, the sociologist, said, "It's not like Mexicans are displacing Puerto Ricans... . Puerto Ricans have stopped coming in the numbers they did before."

Many Mexicans are settling outside of big cities, an unintended consequence of the United States' toughening the border with Mexico around 1993, Rumbaut said.

Where Mexican immigrants once came and went, now they tend to bring their families and stay.

"Militarizing" the border with Mexico, he said, "increased both the costs and risks of immigration ... transforming sojourners into settlers" and stimulating migration of Mexicans into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast for the first time.

"Mexicans already in California started moving to Arkansas for cheaper housing and started making inroads in North Carolina," he said. "The jobs are all over the place," he said. "It's not like the city is the only magnet. Increasingly, as groups move up the economic ladder, they move to suburban areas."