Here we come — 300M strong

WASHINGTON — The U.S. population is on target to hit 300 million this fall, and it's a good bet the milestone baby — or immigrant — will be Hispanic.

No one will know for sure because the date and time will be just an estimate.

But Latinos — immigrants and those born in this country — are driving the population growth. They accounted for almost half the increase last year, more than any other ethnic or racial group. White non-Hispanics, who make up about two-thirds of the population, accounted for less than one-fifth of the increase.

Phil Shawe sees the impact at his company, Translations.com. The New York-based business started in 1992, when it mainly helped U.S. companies translate documents for work done overseas. Today, the company's domestic business is booming on projects such as helping a pharmacy print prescription labels in up to five languages or providing over-the-phone translation services for tax preparers.

"It's been a huge growth area for our business," said Shawe, the president and chief executive. "Not only is the Hispanic market growing faster than the average, but it is also growing in purchasing power."

When the population reached 200 million in 1967, there was no accurate tally of U.S. Hispanics. The first effort to count Hispanics came in the 1970 census, and the results were dubious.

The Census Bureau counted about 9.6 million Latinos, a little less than 5 percent of the population. The bureau acknowledged that the figure was inflated in the Midwest and South because some people who checked the box saying they were "Central or South American" thought that designation meant they were from the central or southern United States.

Most people in the United States did not have any neighbors from Central America or South America in the 1960s. The baby boom had just ended in 1964, and the country was growing through birth rates, not immigration, said Howard Hogan, the Census Bureau's associate director for demographic programs.

In 1967, there were fewer than 10 million people in the U.S. who were born in other countries; that was not even one in 20. White non-Hispanics made up about 83 percent of the population. Today, there are 36 million immigrants, about one in eight.

"We were much more of an insular society back then," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "It was much more of a white, middle-class, suburban society."