ABSTRACT
In the last decade of the twentieth century more immigrants entered the US than in any other decade in the nation’s history. It is estimated that the immigrant population, both documented and undocumented, reached a record 37.9 million in 2007 (Camarota 2007). In the 1990s alone, 11 million immigrants entered the US. Traditionally, new arrivals to the US inmigrated to ethnic neighborhoods in such large cities as New York, Chicago, and Boston. This traditional settlement pattern has changed with many new immigrants bypassing the city and migrating directly to the suburbs (Singer et al. 2008). According to a recent report by the US Census Bureau, four in every ten immigrants sidestepped the traditional urban core and settled directly in the suburbs in 2006 (Roberts 2007). There are now more immigrants living in US suburbia than in the nation’s central cities (Singer et al. 2008). In this chapter, we focus on the suburban nature of more recent immigration.
