It is alive and well and attracting the diversity Sacramento began during the Gold Rush, the greatest westward movement of people in history, and it continues to enrich and deepen the cultural and economic life of our region, a very good thing.
Influx of immigrants reshapes Sacramento suburbs
By Susan Ferriss - sferriss@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, March 21, 2008
There may be fewer McDonald's and Wienerschnitzel eateries.
And if suburban Sacramento is any indication, Middle America is in for more Asian noodles and octopus, and Mexican chiles and pickled cactus.
U.S. suburbs are getting an ethnic makeover as more immigrants leave traditional big-city ethnic enclaves and head to the 'burbs to forge their American dream.
The Sacramento region – and eight other U.S. metropolitan areas – are featured as examples of the phenomenon in a new book, "Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America."
Published by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, the book chronicles how unprecedented immigrant influxes – with Latinos and Asians in the lead – are transforming what once were mostly white suburbs.
"As the nation as a whole becomes more suburban, so do immigrants," said Robin Datel, a California State University, Sacramento, geography professor who co-wrote the book's chapter about Sacramento with her husband, Dennis Dingemans. He's a retired geography professor at the University of California at Davis.
In the past, the book points out, it was the offspring of immigrants who moved out of cities, many of them abandoning their cultural practices.
Today, immigrants from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis to Charlotte, N.C., are going suburban and taking their tastes with them.
