Emerging Immigrant Destinations

Beginning in the 1990s, immigrants began settling in large numbers in cities and towns outside of traditional immigrant gateways. In 2006, RSF launched an initiative to study the extent and impact of this geographic dispersal of the immigrant population. As a first step in this initiative, demographer Mary Fischer will conduct a statistical mapping of the non-traditional cities and regions that are attracting immigrants and the rate at which the local foreign-born population is growing in each of those locales. Using data from the Census Bureau, the Current Population Survey, and the American Community Survey, Dr. Fischer will identify the salient characteristics of the new communities in which immigrants are settling. Fischer will examine factors such as the density of the immigrant population in each community, the racial and ethnic composition of the native born, school quality, housing values, employment rates, and wage levels. The study will also investigate the characteristics of the immigrants who opt to locate in these non-traditional areas. As well as expanding our empirical knowledge of this nascent trend, Fischer’s findings will be used to identify the communities that will be more systematically investigated in a larger RSF study.