CROWN POINT | Questions of how Indiana should confront immigration-reform issues once reverberated most intensely in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties.

But experts say a change in where immigrants locate has changed all that.

Tens of thousands marched for immigration rights Tuesday in Chicago, Los Angeles and other locations throughout the country -- but not in Northwest Indiana, which, as recently as 1990, was home to half the state's Hispanic population.

Although East Chicago retains a heavy Latin flavor, fewer than three out of 10 Hoosier Hispanics live in the region today, said Lauren Rhein, a demographics analyst with the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission. That number is down from the past, she said.

In fact, Rhein said manufacturing and service jobs, which typically attract Hispanics and other immigrants to Indiana, are growing more rapidly in Chicago and elsewhere in Indiana.

"Indiana hasn't been a port of entry for Hispanic immigrants, illegal or otherwise, for a long time," said the Rev. Thomas Gannon, director of the Hammond-based Heartland Center, which conducts research on social issues. "There is certainly a concern about the issue in the Hispanic community, but there aren't as organized protests."

Some area Hispanics are too busy trying to survive to take off a day in protest, some people familiar with the issue say.

Bob Mendoza, who is active in an outreach ministry for St. Edward's Church in Lowell, said, "We care for of those working in the migrant farms. ... They come in the springtime and work until fall. When they come here, they have nothing but the clothes on their backs. They are out there from the crack of dawn until night. There is no time-and-a-half or double-time."