The transnationals

Natural History, March, 1998 by Nancy Foner

Immigrants who came through Ellis Island in the last wave were overwhelmingly from southern and eastern Europe; today's arrivals are far more diverse. They come from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and China - to name the top five source countries for legal immigrants in 1995. Where once there were Jewish pushcart peddlers, now there are Korean greengrocers and Indian newsstand dealers. Mexican gardeners and busboys are also a familiar part of the urban landscape.

A century ago, immigrants were generally poor and low skilled; today, too, many reach America with little more than the shirts on their backs. Still, according to the 1990 census, a third of all those who arrived in the previous five years were college graduates. The West African driving your cab in New York City could well turn out to be studying engineering at City College. The Korean greengrocer may have a master's degree. Many are practicing their professions and trades here - in medicine, engineering, and computers. And some are bringing with them substantial amounts of capital that give them a start in business.

In what seems like a timeless feature of immigrant settlement, today's newcomers often cluster in enclaves near kinfolk and friends, finding comfort and security in an environment of shared languages and institutions. But new polyethnic neighborhoods, with no parallel in previous waves of immigration, have also emerged. New York's Elmhurst section, in the borough of Queens, now has the distinction of welcoming more people from more places than any other ZIP code in the United States. Between 1991 and 1995, nearly 13,000 immigrants from a stunning 123 countries moved there. Among better-educated and more prosperous immigrants, a new kind of suburban existence is developing in the nation's bedroom communities. Monterey Park, California, only eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles, has been dubbed the first suburban Chinatown.

Another dramatic difference is that most of today's immigrants are people of color, while those in the last great wave were, in the main, phenotypically white. Most newcomers enter racially polarized cities, where they often live among - and are victims of the same kind of prejudice as - native-born blacks and Hispanics. Bear in mind, however, that race was an issue in the last wave as well. Jews and Italians, thought to belong to inferior races, faced outspoken prejudice.

Some reasons that immigrants are drawn to America do not change. Today's newcomers are often escaping oppressive governments and poverty. In 1991, the minimum monthly salary for full-time work in the United States was thirteen times higher than the minimum wage in the Dominican Republic; a Brazilian baby-sitter in New York makes more in one week than she made in a month as head nurse back home. Government policies have also influenced the flow of migrants. Some countries, like China, have relaxed their exit restrictions. In the United States, the liberalization of immigration laws after 1965, along with new refugee policies, opened the gates to millions (most notably, Asians) who had been shut out before.

Once the immigrants settle here, modern transportation and communications change the context in which they live out their lives. Some social scientists even think a new term needs to be invented - "transnational" - to characterize the way many people now forge ties across national borders. Even before they arrive, their exposure to a new, global consumer culture and economy means that today's immigrants are more culturally attuned to the United States than their predecessors were. Once, letters spread the word about America; now, movies and television bring vivid, up-close views of American popular culture to the remotest villages in the developing world.

A century ago, the trip back to Italy took about two weeks, and more than a month elapsed between sending a letter home and receiving a reply. Today's immigrants can hop on a plane or make a phone call to check out how things are going at home. They can participate in weddings of scattered relatives by watching videotapes sent by mail and maintain business involvement in more than one country through modern telecommunications. And the technology is not all that's changed. New, dual-nationality provisions in a growing number of countries allow immigrants who become United States citizens to vote in their home country as well as here. The Dominican Republic will soon allow its citizens to cast their ballots in polling places abroad, making New York's Dominican community the second largest constituency in Dominican elections - exceeded only by Santo Domingo.

The newcomers are a force to be reckoned with. In California, the Republican Party worries about alienating the growing Hispanic vote; Miami already has a Cuban American mayor. By 1990, Asians were 15 percent of the entering class at Harvard and almost 25 percent at MIT. Although the Chinese were once vilified as the "yellow peril" and Japanese Americans were imprisoned in internment camps not so long ago, Asian Americans now have a new image; some even call them the "model minorities."