US immigrant populations are spreading out, a study released Monday found.
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New immigrants and their US-born descendants are expected to grow by 117 million by 2050, making up 82 percent of the US population growth over that period, and will “have important implications for housing demand at a time when aging baby boomers are expected to retire and leave the housing market,” the study predicts.
New immigrants who once flocked to the large "gateway" cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago are now heading for smaller metropolitan areas like Detroit and Minneapolis, Colorado Springs, Colo., Sarasota, Fla., and El Paso, Tex., according to the the study, released by the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southen California. The census data used for the study didn't take into account respondents' legal status.
“Every city in the US is getting a sizable immigration population,” said Gary Painter, director of research at the Lusk Center and co-author of the study, in a phone interview. “We are no longer a country where immigration is largely confined to just a few places.”
The typical immigrant seen in these new places is likely to have been in the US fewer than 10 years, he says, whereas the typical immigrant in a larger city has likely been here much longer. The implication of this is that new immigrants probably have less English language skills, are less likely to be integrated, and are less likely to own a home.
“We found that the immigrant communities in these smaller metro areas are much less developed," Mr. Painter said. "The questions we need to ask ourselves are 'what sorts of policies do we want to pursue because of this?' ”
The study, “Immigrants and Housing Markets in Mid-Size Metropolitan Areas” by Painter and co-author Zhou Yu, an assistant professor at the University of Utah, looked at census data from 2000
