National Association of Counties * Washington, D.C.            Vol. 31, No. 15 * August 9, 1999

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The Changing Face of Immigration

In the past, especially during the industrial revolution, immigrants from around the world flocked to the cities in America. This huge migration met the needs for manual labor and changed the face of cities creating an urban identity common across the country.

Now, a new migration is taking place, sparked by the needs of the nation’s high tech economy. But this time, the new immigrants are not using cities and urban cores as their points of entry, but are moving directly to suburbia, forever changing the face of these communities.

These new immigrants are also very different from those of the past because they come from two distinct economic bases. They are also different because earlier immigrants used jobs in the urban core to earn good wages, become upwardly mobile and to assimilate. Little education was required of these early immigrants, just a strong desire to work. Hard work could lead to the middle class. Not so today.

The proliferation of suburban office parks around major cities has created jobs outside of the urban core and attracted many new immigrants to these affluent suburban locations. But the difference is not only in the location of the jobs. The difference is also in the kinds of jobs that are drawing the new migration. The demand for highly skilled and educated workers such as mathematicians, biologists, and engineers has drawn many well-educated immigrants from places such as India, Pakistan and other Asian countries.

Many of these immigrants come from the highly valued academic communities in their countries to take these jobs. Although many experience a drop in job status and importance, most substantially increase their income. Increasingly, these best educated are finding well paying jobs in suburban high tech companies when academic or government jobs are unavailable because of their immigration status or language difficulties.

The second type of new immigrant, also migrating to these suburban locations, is one with less than a high school education.

In one suburban county near the nation’s Capitol, one of the major metropolitan areas in the country that is experiencing high immigration, more than 17 percent of the immigrants arriving in the last five years lacked a high school diploma. Most of these immigrants are Hispanic, coming from Latin America and Mexico. They stand out more than the early immigrants who migrated to the urban cores during the industrial revolution when most immigrants were working class. The reasons are simple. They generally are non-white and are moving into affluent areas where the overall educational level is high.

According to recent reports by the Census Bureau, new immigrants in the counties surrounding Washington, D.C. are being employed in very high numbers in both the high end technical positions as well as the low end service jobs. Even though many are in high tech positions, recent data collected by Fairfax County, Va. indicates that 41 percent of these new arrivals are likely to be cooks or cleaners, food service workers, janitors and construction workers, positions that normally employ just 13 percent of the total workforce.

New immigrants (those in the United States for less than 10 years) currently comprise 8 percent of the working adults in the D.C. metro region and surrounding counties but make up 25 percent of the food service workers, 20 percent of the janitorial employees and more than 50 percent of the construction workers.

Experts predict that the continuing growth and high demand for these two kinds of employees will continue in our current expanding economy and tight labor market and will continue to fuel immigration.

This continuing immigration pattern is creating a new phenomenon in formerly suburban counties because it translates into a well-paid upwardly mobile society as well as a poorly paid service industry society with nothing in between.

The housing patterns of the new immigrants have created additional demands for services in many suburban counties since most live in communities that are separated by income. Historically, in the urban cores of the past, rich and poor lived relatively close to each other. In the new suburbs this is not true.

Not only do the rich and poor not live together; they are often in different jurisdictions, drawn by the cost of living and the availability of affordable housing. The largest impact for most suburban counties has been in the public schools. Arlington County, Va. has seen its spending on school programs for English as a Second Language (ESL) programs double in the last 10 years. Montgomery County, Md. serves 8,000 students in its ESL and this number increases by 500 students a year. School systems that were once the magnets that drew majority white families to the suburbs are now facing the challenges of providing educational opportunities for a wide array of nationalities with differing economic and educational levels.

(Research News was written by Jacqueline Byers, research director.)