U.S. cities that have become unlikely homes to immigrant communities

The Marshallese of Springdale, AR.

Wow, really? What's that all about?

Nor am I talking about obviously cosmopolitan places like New York or Los Angeles, where you expect to find people of a million different ethnicities.

True, but it's not like the Vietnamese community of Orange County just 'obviously' appeared, for instance.

ashamed to admit i don't actually know the story of why the US somali community is so strong in the TCs. they do look miserable in the winter, but then everybody does ha

xp Well, I think that Orange County is distinct enough from L.A. that it's worth noting.

chicago?

is it wrong that i found this right-wing article freaking out about somalis in MN, and i'm lolling cos the authors are named brown and coon y/n

er http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID=%7BA4B08966-CAE6-47B1-954C-8DBF407120DA%7D

there is a signifcant vietnamese population in Oklahoma City.

"Little Saigon," tucked in the heart of barbecue and cowboy country, was born in 1975 when thousands of Vietnamese refugees came to Oklahoma City after the fall of Saigon.

The Vietnamese population has continued to grow since the first wave of immigrants were dropped just across the state line in Fort Chaffee, AR. Relatives and friends have joined them in Oklahoma City as stories of success had reached the homeland in Vietnam, causing the population to explode.

The original refugees made Oklahoma City their home thanks to a handful of activists who brought hundreds out of the camp. Each refugee had to have an American sponsor before leaving the Arkansas barracks.

The first refugees, most of whom did not speak English, left professional and military careers in Vietnam to become laborers -- brick makers, builders and warehouse workers in Oklahoma City. In time, they became lawyers, doctors and engineers, sent their children to American colleges and started businesses in the Little Saigon portion of Asia District. They opened dental and chiropractor offices, nail salons and insurance agencies.

Immigrants also created a local chapter of the Vietnamese-American Association and the Vietnamese Buddhist Association, which recently broke ground on a new temple in Asia District.

Vietnamese in Garden City, KS. As I understand it, the ag industry there, mostly meatpacking, brought in lots of refugees after the war, and has kept that pipeline open since.

The same is true of Mexicans in Garden City and in Dodge City (where every storefront sign downtown is now in Spanish, really striking), but I think that's less interesting in light of general southwestern trends.

I think I knew a dude once who was half-Vietnamese and from OK City.

Or somewhere in Oklahoma, at least.

Indianapolis apparently has a lot of Brazilians.

indian immigrants in edison, nj

yeah it's statewide. i am from tulsa and went to school with a fairly large number of vietnamese kids.
xxpost

if there's a meatpacking plant somewhere, there's likely to be a large immigrant population.

is this the thread where we learn why these homes aren't that unlikely?

well any place is unlikely, in a sense.

biggest ethiopian cluster is in Washington DC, not sure why.

indian immigrants in edison, nj

I guess this one doesn't surprise me too much because Indians are the third-largest immigrant group in the U.S. after Mexicans and Filipinos, and also because Edison is basically still within the New York metropolitan area. There are lots of Indians in the Chicago suburbs, too.

Lots for Vietnamese in Texas, too. I seem to vaguely remember something about fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico being partly responsible.

jaymc, what's the year cutoff for "unlikeliness"?

A whole lotta U.S. history is based on things happening and changing due to "unlikeliness", ya know.

Otherwise, too tired for ethnicity population schlong measuring contest.

Houston has big viet population

biggest ethiopian cluster is in Washington DC, not sure why.

Was just about to say this. When I lived down there, seems like every haircut place was full of Ethopian women working there.

Most of the Africans I meet around here are Nigerian.

Are we only talking about present-day populations here? Lots of immigrant communities were formed during the Industrial Revolution when employment agents went to towns and cities in Europe and recruited whole neighborhoods to come to random parts of the US to work in mills, mines, etc.

a lot of jewish immigrants ended up in the south because ellis island didn't want to admit any more jews in new york

Kinda crazy that Oklahoma has all of those Cherokees from Florida living there.

so their ships were rerouted to southern ports (xpost)

Otherwise, too tired for ethnicity population schlong measuring contest.

um what?

Kinda crazy that Oklahoma has all of those Cherokees from Florida living there.

and Chickasaw, and Choctaw, and Creek, and Seminole

And all those nutty Okies who live out in Bakersfield.

a lot of jewish immigrants ended up in the south because ellis island didn't want to admit any more jews in new york

mostly in LA/MS, right?

I read an article about this in the New Yorker, about some huge african population is some tiny midwestern town or Maine. This happens all over with america accepting refugee groups. Defnitely not the same case as Edison NJ (see also Iselin and Hicksville) which are cases of Indian immigration to the NY area, starting in Jackson Heights mostly then moving to the suburbs.

What's interesting to me, though off topic to the thread, is the population that's starting to replace the Indian population to some degree in Jackson Heights...Nepalese and Tibeten.

St. Louis has the largest Bosnian community in America since the late '90s.

Houston has big viet population

-- gabbneb, Wednesday, July 16, 2008 2:20 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.day19.com/blog/0507/johnnydang.jpg

^^should be "has had" (x-post)

Interesting fact:

"In the early 1990s, there had been fewer than 1,000 Bosnians in St. Louis. In 1998, Bosnian immigrants arrived in St. Louis at a rate of 40 to 60 per week."

from here

Memphis has a pretty large Jewish population.

Plus, a mosque is the first religious building you see after crossing the river on 40.

So go figure.

dan, you're thinking of the article on somalis settling in lewiston, maine.

We have bosnian, sudanese, and vietnamese communities in Des Moines at the least. Not to mention the latin american contingent.

jaymc, what's the year cutoff for "unlikeliness"?

A whole lotta U.S. history is based on things happening and changing due to "unlikeliness", ya know.

Otherwise, too tired for ethnicity population schlong measuring contest.

I'm not sure I understand any of your post, sorry.

"Unlikely" should probably have quotes around it, since as gabbneb suggests, this thread is partially about figuring out why these groups may have settled where they did.

All I mean by using the word is that it's on the surface surprising (to me, at least) that there is such a large Somali population in the Twin Cities, for example. Nothing I know about either Somalis or the Twin Cities explains it, and in fact the popular image of Minnesota as this cold region filled with Germans and Scandinavians is directly at odds with the reality of the state's African immigrants. Hence: "unlikely."

Memphis has a pretty large Jewish population.

Actually, while looking at some stats on top immigrant groups per state I noted that there were an unusual number of Egyptians in Tennessee, and it made me wonder whether they were attracted to Memphis.

it's because of the pyramid, i think

Memphis has a pretty large Jewish population.

i was gonna say - a lot of lower/central mississippi towns?

Fremont, California: largest concentration of Afghans in the US

There's also sizable Basque communities in Bakersfield and Stockton, CA and in Boise, Idaho. (more or less where there were large sheep farms)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2299/2207642180_5389d64585.jpg

Worst mezuzah ever.

http://www.boisestate.edu/history/issuesonline/fall2005_issues/gallery_vietczech/1_gallery_vietczech.html

St. Louis has the largest Bosnian community in America since the late '90s.

-- s. morris, Wednesday, July 16, 2008 6:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

srsly, there are 3 in my office!

http://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Srebrenica-Survivors-Louis/dp/1883982367

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Charleston,_South_Carolina

Wow, really? What's that all about?

http://www.ardemgaz.com/ads/mi/index.html

i thought it was well-known that most "unlikely" immigrant populations are seeded primarily by refugee populations that have little to no say about where they end up in the US.

the hmong in mpls and wisc. for instance were (if i recall correctly) shipped there because they helped out the US during the vietnam war, and faced retribution. now why they chose the midwest and not some climate more like se asia probably has something to do with gov't funding. like, let us pick mpls as a receiving city for refugees and we'll pump a lot of money into the city's coffers

Yeah, see, that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. Although I do remember hearing that the Somali population in Lewiston, ME, originally settled in Atlanta but decided they didn't like it, so they moved.

Here's that New Yorker article mentioned upthread (not sure why I don't remember it from when it originally ran).

hmong population in mpls also greatly assisted by christian (lutheran specifically) charities involvement/outreach/feelings of guilt/responsibility

hm, i should ask my parents how the fuck they ended up in iowa when they moved from korea in the late 60s....

Its not the US, I know, but Melbourne has the largest Maltese population outside of Malta, apparently, and one of the largest Greek ones.

dirty Greeks. So, do you have a million diners out there in Melbourne? (NYC metro joke)

As refugees, the Hmong (and other groups) were required to have various sponsors throughout the country, and were, like gbx mentioned, basically shipped where the government chose. This was a conscious decision on the part of the government to prevent the creation of ethnic enclaves. However, secondary migration within the states soon followed. As I understand it, the Hmong society is organized around clans, with highly respected clan leaders. Much of the secondary clustering resulted from refugees moving to communities associated with these leaders.

from the U.S. Dept. of State: "Refugees are resettled throughout the United States. The U.S. Government has entered into cooperative agreements with nine non-governmental organizations, six of which are faith-based, and the State of Iowa, which receive federal funding and work together to determine where particular families are resettled, and consider many factors. These factors include whether the refugees have any family members in the United States, the extent to which established groups of the refugee’s ethnic group or nationality already reside in an area, and the capacity of a particular agency to assist certain ethnic groups or cases with special needs. Considering these factors ensure that the refugees receive the best services possible and will integrate successfully in the United States.

These nine agencies have a network of some 387 affiliates located in 49 states across the U.S. to receive refugees and integrate refugees, every U.S. state except Wyoming. The network also extends to the U.S. territory Guam and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."

(also, how the Lost Boys of Sudan end up in the Dakotas)

Great thread topic.

Here's the deal with the Cape Verdeans in Rhode Island / southeastern Mass. Back in ye olde whaling days, ships used to cross the Atlantic from say New Bedford or Nantucket towards the African coast, usually on their way to the Indian Ocean whaling grounds and beyond. Well guess what the Cape Verde archipelago was usually the first land sighted and by then ships needed to resupply and whatnot. More to the point, captains would take the opportunity to fill out vacancies in their crew with some of the locals hanging out on the docks of Sao Vicente etc. Those recruits who made it round the planet with the ship would end up in New England, from time to time settling there, conveniently adjacent to the well-established Portuguese fishing communities.

Many also went on to provide labor for Ocean Spray and other cranberry bog-meisters in that general neck of the woods.

tri cities WA and russians

Best Arguments for Miscegenation: The Biracial Hotties Thread

Sheesh, forgot to mention where I work... Glendale, California - roughly 40-50% of the population is Armenian.

Interesting thread.

Am I right in the thinking that there's a large Swedish population in Minnesota?

We have some unlikely ones here in the UK as well. The Koreans of New Malden, the Italians of Bedford, to name but two off the top of my head.

there's a large scandinavian presence in minn and wisconsin, which isn't all that unlikely IMO. that "oh hey dere doncha know" accent can be traced to scandinavian roots.

CG, thanks for the info about the Cape Verdeans. I wondered if there was a connection to the Portuguese in Massachusetts; I had no idea that both groups have been in the area for as long as you suggest.

anyone have any more interesting bits of info on stuff like this NOT in the US?

Gort and it's Brazilian population?

Indians in Fiji and East Africa?

I just recently learned that there's a big Portuguese connection with bits of Japan (Nagasaki is the main bit I remember).

But never mind, that's more of a cultural connection, not an actual presence of immigrants

west africans in guangzhou?
chinese in jamaica?

koreans in uzbekistan

jaymc yeah the portuguese were there even longer. there's even those who propose it's quite likely portuguese cod-fishermen made landfall on the Americas (probably around Newfoundland or Nova Scotia) before Columbus. The first waves of Portuguese migration was actually heavily Jewish, fueled as it was by the Inquisition. And in general a lot of the Portuguese who settled New England over the course of the centuries have come from the Azores (which during the whaling days was a port of call much like Cape Verde).

These days it's the Brazilians who are swelling the ranks of Portuguese speakers round these parts.

I know that the world that I personally live in might not be too large, but I had no idea that there was such a sizable Japanese population in Peru that it was no problem that a man named Fujimori could be elected President there.

Where I live in Japan there's a significant Brazilian population, never really figured out why.

japanese-brazilian population is pretty huge right? like easily the largest part of the japanese diaspora. Especially around Sao Paulo. Most of them are descendants of immigrant workers who left an economically depressed japan in the early 1900s

Oh, right. I'm dumb.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/61599782.html

The Milwaukee City attorney says that this ordinance is required to uphold federal law. But really, it sounds like the intent of the ordinance is to protect the City from being sued in case they unknowingly provide "benefits" to undocumented business owners by granting them a license (even ones that are already established and just renewing their license). But surely the tax revenue generated from these licensees probably more than offsets any potential cost to the City from lawsuits, right? How many other cities permit and license divisions are just now comply with this 13-year-old federal law?

Those who want to do business in Milwaukee may first have to prove that they are U.S. citizens, under a proposal that will have a hearing next week.

According to the proposed ordinance, all applicants for a new or renewed professional or commercial license or permit to do business in the city of Milwaukee would be required to show proof of U.S. citizenship or documentation of their legal status and ability to work in this country.

The Common Council's licensing committee has scheduled a hearing on the measure for 8 a.m. Tuesday in Room 301B of City Hall.

The ordinance has been introduced to ensure compliance with the United States Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which prohibits state and local governments from giving public benefits, including professional and commercial licenses and permits, to those who are not citizens or do not have legal status to work here, City Clerk Ron Leonhardt.

The new measure also would be in line with U.S. Department of Homeland Security requirements, he said.

If the ordinance passes, the city's license division will reject any new or renewal applications if the required documentation is not provided, he said.

An appeal process also is outlined in the measure if an applicant is rejected.

"The ordinance is an attempt to comply with federal laws, and it's not the intention to target any ethnic group," Leonhardt said. A variety of community-based organizations and others, such as the Wisconsin Restaurant Association and the taxi cab companies, were advised of the proposed ordinance, he said.

"With such a bad economy, this is not a time to try to put any more obstacles in the way of people, particularly the undocumented," said Tony Baez, president and CEO of the Council for the Spanish Speaking. "It's punitive. And it's also not the time when the country as a whole is trying to engage in comprehensive immigration reform," he added.