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Herndon called 'immigrant gateway'
A new book released by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., says that Herndon and some other Northern Virginia localities have become national gateways for immigrants coming to the United States.
The book, titled “Twenty First Century Gateways; Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America,” was published March 17.
The book's sixth chapter, “Immigrants, Suburbs and the Politics of Reception in Metropolitan Washington,” is co-authored by Audrey Singer and George Washington University Professor Marie Price.
This chapter reveals that the suburbs of metropolitan Washington have become one of the “latest top destinations in the country” for immigrants.
A subheading within the chapter, “Herndon: Rapid Change and Resistance,” says Herndon is “not a community accustomed to thinking of itself as an immigrant gateway, and unlike the other communities in this study, it has experienced serious tensions surrounding the issue of day laborers.”
According to the authors, one third of Herndon's foreign-born population arrived from abroad within the preceding five years, a population comprising more recent immigrants than arrived at many other gateways.
Only Centreville and Chantilly have experienced higher foreign-population growth among Fairfax County localities between the 1990 and 2000 Census studies.
According to the book, Herndon experienced a 169-percent increase in foreign-born population within those 10 years. Chantilly was slightly higher at 175 percent, and Centreville, nearly double, with a 324-percent increase.
The book states that more than one in three Herndon residents in 2000, the year of the last Census, was foreign-born, with populations from El Salvador, Peru, India, Pakistan and Honduras accounting for nearly two thirds of the town's entire foreign-born population.
It lists housing affordability, access to major transportation corridors, existing social networks and the “avoidance of black neighborhoods” as the primary reasons that new immigrants tend to cluster in Northern Virginia suburbs.
“We suspect that large numbers of immigrants settling in a place may make it less attractive for native-born residents, who over time may leave the area and thus allow room for more immigrants to settle,” the authors state in the conclusion of the chapter.
“In the absence of federal policy on immigrant integration, local governments are left to develop strategies that tend to both accommodate and deflect immigrants.”
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