crossing the high-tech divide >BY Roberto Suro

American Demographics, July, 1999

transcendence The isolation is growing more profound as poor immigrant families increasingly cluster according to economic status. Traditionally immigrants have settled along national or linguistic lines. But suburban towns like Wheaton, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia, have developed into polyglot enclaves where Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Koreans, and those of other nationalities have found homes. They are bound together only by their status as the new suburban proletariat, and have forever changed the regional landscape. For the first time, suburbs are serving as ports of entry, the first stop for immigrants just arriving in the United States.

Still, immigrants in the suburbs are more scattered than in traditional big-city settings, says Gerald Gordon, president of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. And residential integration, he adds, is a "function of integration into jobs." To the extent that economic success is an important factor in assimilation, "there is no question that education and training not only provide access to the economy but are a crucial factor in helping people from other countries become part of the larger community," Gordon says.

Nowhere has the impact been clearer than in the public schools. In Arlington, spending on English as a Second Language (ESL) programs has nearly doubled in the past ten years. In Montgomery County, the ESL program serves 8,000 students and is growing by as many as 500 students a year. Schools that once acted as magnets for whites leaving the cities now face the challenge of ensuring economic opportunity for the newest residents. Even as they find their way in a new land, these youth must prepare to make the leap into a new economy, where the skills and knowledge that ensure prosperity are in a constant state of reinvention.

Employers are taking the initiative, sponsoring programs not only to train workers in job-related skills but also to teach them English and a basic knowledge of business practices. "With a 1.7 percent unemployment rate, this is somewhat self-serving," says Gordon. "Employers who once sat back and waited for skilled applicants to compete for jobs are now looking in every nook and cranny for people with no skills who can be retrained, and that includes the handicapped and the retired and people from other countries, who are a very big pool of potentially skilled workers."

So far, the suburban economy has proved a rising tide, lifting all boats, even though some are going higher than others. The recession in the early 1990s was too brief and too shallow to offer much of a guide as to how the interrelationship between low-wage immigrants and a high-tech economy will fare in a future downturn. But the expansion of the past decade has lasted long enough to ensure that an entire generation of newcomers has established a permanent place in America's prosperous suburbs. Just where they fit in still remains to be seen.

>CN Zeitgeist