More and more immigrants finding that suburbia offers best place to live

These aren't your grandparents' immigrants.

Once associated with teeming inner-city tenements, immigrants are now increasingly a suburban phenomenon in the Twin Cities and eight other so-called "gateway cities" identified Monday in a national report.

The seven-county metro area has also emerged as one of the nation's fastest-growing immigrant gateways. Between 1980 and 2005, the region's immigrant population swelled from 72,000 to 267,000, an increase of about 270 percent.

The Brookings Institution report, which carries implications for schools and employers across the area, shows that today's immigrants are chasing jobs and opportunities where they are more likely to be found: in the suburbs.

"There's still a television sitcom image of the suburbs as lily-white, prosperous places with tidy lawns and families with two cars. That's certainly not accurate," said Katherine Fennelly, a professor at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs and co-author of the report's Twin Cities section.

Nationwide, more immigrants in actual numbers came to the United States during the 1990s than in any other decade, especially in places outside traditional magnets like New York and Los Angeles. Drawn by jobs, housing and schools, one in five immigrants today lives in one of the nation's nine new gateway communities, including the Twin Cities.

"There's a new geography of immigration and it's here to stay," said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-editor of the study, "Twenty-First Century Gateways." "Most of the integration that we're talking about ... happens at the local level."

In 2005 there were more than 172,000 foreign-born residents living in the Twin Cities suburbs, almost double the number living in the central cities of Minneapolis or St. Paul, according to the report.

"You find concentrations of immigrants in particular areas where they are able to find housing and where they are able to get to jobs," Fennelly said.

In the Twin Cities, the immigrant population is also fueled by the resettlement of refugee populations from places like Liberia, Somalia and Laos, often with the help of churches and faith-based organizations.

But where so many first found a home in the central city, more are now apt to be found in suburban cul-de-sacs. The authors say it portends what the metro area may look like in the future.

"What it reflects is perhaps what the state will look like tomorrow ... meaning in the next 10 or 20 years," Fennelly said.

In many ways this migration from city to suburbs mirrors a well-trodden path for previous waves of immigrants.

"I think that's expected," said Barbara Ronningen, a demographer in the Minnesota State Demographic Center. "This has happened forever."

Drawn to the suburbs

Kerper Dwanyen, president of the Organization of Liberians in Minnesota, exemplifies the pattern. The 48-year-old Brooklyn Center resident came to the Minnesota suburbs years ago by way of Detroit.

"When I came to this country 30 years ago, probably 99 percent of the Liberians I knew lived in the inner city," said Dwanyen, who works in the mortgage business. "The cities provided jobs, they provided housing, they provided transportation. So it was more accommodating."

Today, most of Dwanyen's Liberian friends and acquaintances live in Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, Maple Grove and Plymouth -- not in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

"That's partially because their economic status has been upgraded, and partly because of job migration to the suburbs. People are basically following the jobs," he said.

But one new trend, the study found, is that future immigrants may bypass the cities. With so many immigrant families now residing in the suburbs, that is where future immigrants are likely to land as well.

"New immigrants tend to come to someone," Dwanyen said.

Others say they are motivated by the same impulses that drive native-born Minnesotans to the suburbs.

"We decided the suburbs had better schools than the cities," said Rosemount resident Richard Baquero, who immigrated from Colombia in 1981 and now helps run his wife's immigration law firm in Richfield.

The Baqueros have put three children through college, moving between Miami and Minneapolis, and finally to the Twin Cities suburbs. Among their South American acquaintances, particularly those who found good jobs or careers, most live outside the central cities.

cjwilson@startribune.com • 202-408-2723 kdiaz@startribune.com • 202-408-2753