The new numbers show that Arkansas has the second-largest population of people from the Marshall Islands out of the 41 states where similar figures have been released. Hawaii is the only state with a bigger Marshallese population so far, with census figures pointing upward of 6,000 people.
The Marshallese presence in Arkansas is not new. People have been leaving the islands in search of work at Arkansas’ poultry plants for decades. The nation’s president even visited two years ago to celebrate the opening of a Marshallese consulate here — the first of its kind on the U.S. mainland.
But until now, the number of people from the Marshall Islands living in Arkansas and other states was a guestimate at best.
One report from the 2000 census showed fewer than 5,500 Marshallese people in the entire U.S. The 2010 census data released so far more than triples that number to 19,400 — and it doesn’t count numbers still to be released from nine other states. About 60,000 people live on the Marshall Islands.
While the latest numbers appear to solidify Arkansas’ status as the mainland state with the largest Marshallese population, they don’t answer the most obvious question: Why Arkansas?
“Jobs,” said Charles Paul, charge d’affaires for the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ embassy in Washington, D.C.
Springdale, Ark., where 87 percent of the state’s 4,100 Marshallese reside, is home to chicken plants and giant meat producer Tyson Foods Inc.
Work is hard to come by in the Marshall Islands, a nation of atolls and islands flung across the Pacific Ocean. It was once the testing ground for nuclear weapons: 67 of them during the 1940s and ’50s. Now, the country exports coconuts and marine resources like tuna.
So, when people immigrated to the U.S. and found work in Arkansas, they told friends and relatives back home.
