THEY CAN'T GET TO NH FAST ENOUGH:

The newest frontier: Immigrants are transforming some surprising parts of America (The Economist, 2/21/08)

MILWAUKEE is a striking example of how much America owes to German immigrants. The city is a paradise for beer-swillers and sausage-scoffers (it was the scene of the “sausage summit” between Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl in 1996). The grandest hotel is the Pfister, the local theatre is the Pabst, and one of the main streets is North Teutonia Avenue. The phone book lists 40 pages of Schmitts and Schmidts.

And yet today this frozen chunk of Greater Germania is being transformed by people from much sunnier climes. Milwaukee's 80,000 or so Hispanics make up almost 15% of the population. A company called El Rey Mexican Products owns a tortilla factory and five shops that sell everything from hot sauce to Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola. There are several local bilingual newspapers, including Voces de la Frontera. Pentecostal churches are popping up in disused stores and offering fiery services in Spanish.

When people think of recent American immigrants—particularly Latino ones—it tends to be in terms of a handful of states (California, Texas, New York, Illinois and Florida) and a handful of gateway cities (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Chicago). But this is a habit that needs to be broken. One of the most striking demographic trends of the past couple of decades has been the dispersal of America's immigrant population. Immigrants are settling in small towns as well as big cities, in suburbs as well as inner-city ghettos, in rural areas as well as metropolitan ones, in the great American interior as well as on the coasts. The proportion of Mexican-born people living in states other than the four border states plus Illinois increased from 10% in 1990 to 25% in 2000.

It'd be nice to go to a department/grocery store that had more than one cash register open and not to pay tree removal guys more than lawyers. Of course, Real Americans want the stinkin'
Krauts deported too.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 21, 2008 4:04 PM