Immigrants Put Down Roots in Communities
It is well recognized that immigrants have settled in communities all across the country and that demographic change has important implications for all segments of society. Researchers like myself have been studying the factors driving immigrant housing demand for the past two decades. This research (Painter et al, 2001) was motivated in part by comparing gaps in native and immigrant housing outcomes, such as homeownership, to assess levels of immigrant integration into communities.
My research shows that the higher rates of moves by immigrant households in the 1980s and 1990s accounted for a substantial part of the gap in homeownership rates between immigrants and native households. Further differences in housing outcomes included different rates of headship (Painter and Yu, 2010), which is the tendency of a person to form a household, a higher propensity to live in over-crowded conditions (Painter and Yu, 2008), and residence in higher cost metropolitan areas (Coulson, 1999).
Practitioners and policy makers throughout the country have often ignored immigrant housing demand and local community contributions of immigrants because until the new millennium, most immigrants lived in a limited number of metropolitan areas (“immigrant gateways”) in a handful of states, such as California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
Even as immigrants began to move to a number of other metropolitan areas in the South and Midwest (“emerging gateways”) in sizeable numbers, practitioners often viewed these populations as more transient in nature, and simply moving from job to job and never putting down roots in communities. This false assumption lead professionals to ignore the influence of the growing number of immigrants in places like emerging gateways.
However, the dawn of the new millennium has yielded a number of changes that requires a reassessment of the level and drivers of housing demand among immigrants as immigrant populations have grown substantially in all metropolitan areas across the United States.
Chief among these changes is how the permanence of the immigrant population has changed markedly over the last two decades. Contrary to pervasive stereotypes, the majority of immigrants in the U.S. are not new arrivals and have lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states). In research funded by the Kauffmann Foundation, we (2016) further discover that mobility rates of immigrants have fallen dramatically, and are now lower than the rates of native born households (See Figure 1 below).
Long distance migration by immigrants has fallen even more when compared to native-born households. Moves across state boundaries have decreased among all households, and moves by immigrant households have fallen from a peak of 3.5 percent per year in 2000 to 1.5 percent in the most recent period. Moves across county boundaries by immigrants fell from a peak of 7 percent to 3 percent in 2013.
It is worth noting that mobility rates have declined for immigrants and native born households at all skill levels. The mobility rates of low skilled immigrants have been similar to native born households over the 20 year period, and have declined from 2 to 1 percent. However, the mobility rates of high skilled immigrants have fallen more dramatically. The mobility rates of high skilled immigrants peaked at 4.5 percentage points, and fell more than 2 percentage points over the period.
The implications of these trends in mobility are many, but the implication that I highlight here is that immigrants are placing deep roots in the communities in which they reside. Immigrants are becoming a part of the fabric of each community and are less likely to leave those communities than are natives even as the economy shifts. Immigrants, and their children, will therefore contribute socially and economically to and share in the fortunes of communities and the future of our country.
Figure 1: Overall rates of annual mobility using CPS data, 1994–2013
Figure 2: Long distance migration rates by nativity
About the author
Professor Painter’s research interests focuses on social innovation, housing, urban economics, and education policy. He is among the world’s foremost experts on how changing demographics impact U.S. housing markets. His recent work has focused on how immigrants are integrating into housing markets across the U.S. and the role of the economic cycle on household formation. Other recent work by Professor Painter has studied immigrant integration issues in spatial labor markets and in education, and his current research focuses on how to evaluate social innovation.