CIAO DATE: 06/04

Rise of New Immigrant Gateways

Audrey Singer

February 2004

Brookings Institution

 

Abstract

TThe United States is in the midst of a wave of unprecedented immigration. Immigrants comprised 11.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2000. During the 1990s alone, the foreign- born population grew by 11.3 million, or 57.4 percent, bringing the Census 2000 count of immigrants to 31.1 million. The rapidity of this influx, coupled with its sheer size, means that American society will confront momentous social, cultural, and political change during the coming decades and generations. Perhaps most importantly, immigrants' settlement patterns are shifting. Specifically, significant flows of the foreign-born are shifting from more traditional areas to places with little history of immigration. More than two-thirds of America's immigrants lived in just six states in 2000 — California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey or Illinois. However, the share of the nation's immigrant population living in those states declined significantly for the first time during the course of the 1990s — from 72.9 percent of the total in 1990 to 68.5 percent in 2000. Thanks to "hot" job markets in their construction, services, manufacturing, and technology sectors, for example, states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Nevada gained immigrants — who moved both from within the U.S. and directly from abroad — at rates not previously witnessed. Notably, many of the areas with the highest growth during the 1990s have little 20th-century history of receiving immigrants. The impact particularly at the metropolitan level has been great, as many cities and suburbs have had to adjust to new populations that place immediate demands on schools and health care systems, particularly with regard to language services.

In terms of absolute numbers, the bulk of immigrants are still going to a handful of metropolitan areas. This explains why current research remains focused on the largest contemporary immigrant-receiving metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Miami.1 However, a new research agenda is suggested by the fact that metropolitan areas with few immigrants in 1980 — such as Atlanta, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Las Vegas — are now seeing extraordinary growth in their immigrant populations. Among these four metropolitan areas, all saw their immigrant populations more than quadruple during the past 20 years. This paper analyzes the new geography of immigration during the 20th century and highlights how immigrant destinations in the 1980s and 1990s differ from earlier settlement patterns. The first part of the analysis uses historical U.S. Census data to develop a classification of urban immigrant "gateways" that describes the ebb and flow of past, present, and likely future receiving areas. The remainder of the analysis examines contemporary trends to explore the recent and rapid settlement of the immigrant population in America's metropolitan gateways. Metropolitan areas that have seen little immigration to date may represent a new policy context for immigrant settlement and incorporation. This paper takes an important first step in understanding how these changes are altering a range of receiving areas by examining the demographic, spatial, economic, and social characteristics of the immigrants that reside in them.

In sum, the findings that follow confirm that the U.S. experienced unparalleled immigration in the 1990s that transformed many new destinations into emerging gateways and changed the character of more established ones. Most large metropolitan areas across the country now need to meet the challenges of incorporating new immigrants with diverse backgrounds and needs.

Full Text (PDF format, 36 pages, 611.7 KB)