Thread: Philadelphia Area Sees Immigration Growth

Report: Philadelphia area sees immigration growth

By JOANN LOVIGLIO – 22 hours ago


PHILADELPHIA (AP) — More than 500,000 immigrants call the Philadelphia metropolitan area home, with more than one-fifth of them arriving since 2000, according to a new report.

Between 2000 and 2006, the immigrant population in the region grew by 113,000 — nearly as many as had arrived during the entire 1990s — comprising 9 percent of the population, according to the report being released Thursday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The report suggests that the Philadelphia area is poised to re-emerge as a destination for immigrants, a longtime characteristic of the region that stalled in the mid-20th century.

National immigration numbers leveled off after 2000. But the Philadelphia region's immigrant population growth between 2000 and 2006 outpaced what the report classifies as comparable metropolitan areas: Baltimore; Buffalo, N.Y.; Cleveland; Detroit; Milwaukee; Pittsburgh; and St. Louis.

All were once immigrant gateways that were replaced after World War II by cities including Miami, Los Angeles and Houston.

"Philadelphia's pulling away from the pack of its peer metropolitan areas," said lead researcher Audrey Singer of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. The rise in its immigration rates since 2000 more closely resembles those of Denver; Minneapolis-St.Paul; Sacramento, Calif.; and Seattle, she said.

"Part of it may be the location, possibly because of the proximity to New York," Singer said, "and the fact that Philly is pretty stable in terms of the housing market and in terms of the job market."

The report is based on census data from the 10-year increments from 1970 through 2000, as well as the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey.

The Philadelphia metropolitan area is defined in the report as Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania; Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Salem counties in New Jersey; New Castle County in Delaware and Cecil County in Maryland.

The fastest immigration growth rate is in the suburbs, with Montgomery County home to the largest number of foreign-born people and Chester County seeing the quickest rise from 1970 to 2006, researchers found.

The region's foreign-born population has become more diverse since the 1970s, when Europeans made up 82 percent of the total. In 2006, 23 percent of the area's immigrants were from Europe, while 39 percent were from Asia, 28 percent from Latin America and 8 percent from Africa.

The Philadelphia Foundation and other philanthropic groups sponsored the research to establish a profile of the region's immigrant population.

"We can grow and spur economic growth if we can capitalize on the skill set of the people that are coming, but we have to understand the demographics of our current and potentially future (immigrant) population," foundation President Andrew Swinney said.

The first step is to treat immigration as a regional issue — not by city or county — and develop a centralized clearinghouse that tracks data on where immigrants are coming from and where they choose to live, according to the report.

"Currently we have no structure to even address that, so we need to create it," Swinney said. "There needs to be a regional task force to look at proactive policies that will benefit the migrant and the community."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYYB ... wD94DVT480

The immigrants coming into the Philly regional area are mostly legal and self-supporting. Mostly Asian & Indian with profitable businesses serving ENTIRE communities. They also tend to buy $500k homes. These are not people who are a drain on our social systems.

Illegal aliens ARE being turned in to ICE. We are NOT a sanctuary area.