New Immigrant Settlements in Rural America: Problems, Prospects, and Policies.

This report examines recent immigrants in rural and small town America, through analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. For many decades urban areas have been, and they remain, the destination of choice for the nation’s immigrants.

Recent evidence suggests, however, that many immigrant groups are dispersing away from traditional gateway cities. Many small towns and cities in every region of the country are contending with new challenges and opportunities brought by rapid increases in their immigrant populations.

To inform policy discussions of this important issue the report:

• Places the latest wave of immigration to the United States in historical and policy context;
• Calls attention to prevailing evidence on the residential preferences of the foreign born, including their movement away from metropolitan areas and their segregation from the native born in regards to neighborhood of residence;
• Pinpoints geographically and describes socio-economically places across the vast expanse of rural America that have received relatively large influxes of recent immigrants; and,
• Compares the characteristics of recent immigrants in rural areas both to their native-born counterparts in those areas, and to their foreign-born counterparts living in more urban locales.

The report suggests that while immigrants are still highly urban in their residential location, there is evidence of deconcentration, particularly to areas at the periphery of traditional settlement areas. However, rural counties with relatively high inflows of recently arrived immigrants can be
found throughout the country. This includes, for example, a clear swath of counties in North Carolina and elsewhere in the Southeast, a pocket of counties in interior south Florida, rural counties in Arkansas and east Texas, counties along the Rio Grande, several pockets throughout the Heartland and upper Great Plains, and in the Mountain West and West Coast.

The industrial base of these rural counties suggest recent immigrants are drawn to opportunities in meat packing and other food processing and agricultural sectors, to certain kinds of manufacturing (e.g., carpeting), and to tourism and amenity based economies. Rural counties that recent immigrants were drawn to were those with favorable characteristics in the early 1990’s (e.g., relatively low poverty rates). However, evidence suggests their presence meant for less improvement in these same characteristics over the economically prosperous 1990’s than would otherwise have been the case.

A comparison of recent immigrants in rural areas suggests that, compared to their more urban counterparts, they are more likely to be Hispanic (and Mexican-origin in particular), more likely to be married, less well educated but still skilled, more likely to be employed but also more likely to be underemployed, more likely to be poor but less likely to receive food stamps when they are poor, and more likely to be homeowners. At the risk of romanticizing, the image of these new arrivals is of a group of people in rural areas who are striving to live up to American values of hard
work, marriage, homeownership, and making a contribution.

The impact of immigration can, and often is, more acutely felt in rural communities than big cities, even if the absolute numbers of new comers may be much smaller. The social and economic infrastructures of rural places are often ill-prepared to handle even comparatively modest increases, and significant inflows can quickly overwhelm. In small places, even numerically modest increases can represent a large increase in population growth.

The unique demographic profile and impact of new immigrants to rural areas need to be a part of the policy discussion. The report suggests that context of reception—the receptivity of rural and small towns to new immigrants—can vary greatly from place to place and can have significant
impacts on the ability of communities to cope and immigrants to assimilate and prosper. Communities need resources, and need to be rewarded for being proactive in being as accommodating as possible. Local, state and federal policies and programs also need to be better informed by solid research on the causes, nature and consequences (both positive and negative, short- and long-term) of immigration to rural areas.
Immigration scholars have been heeding that call, but they need greater support in doing so.

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