Falls Church Improves With New Americans

In the past 10 years the Washington DC metropolitan area has become the seventh largest international gateway in the United States. As the area has diversified, Northern Virginia has started to see the effects of this influx on the local economy and culture.

The area has not equaled the high New American growth of well-known immigrant gateways like Los Angeles and Miami, but it exceeds the gateway communities of Dallas and San Diego, despite those communities’ proximity to the Mexican border.

In addition, New American growth in the D.C. metropolitan area has made up nearly half of all population growth, and predominately, that growth has happened recently, as 46.5% of New Americans moved into the area in the past 10 years.

Falls Church witnessed its own growth in its New American population. Over the past 20 years, growth in the New American population has accounted for 76.5% of the total population growth in the City.

But the numbers about Falls Church are a little deceptive. With a total population growth of only 862 over the past 20 years, the City has added only 659 New Americans.

While the increase in New Americans has been a nationwide phenomenon, the D.C. Metro area has been unique in the diversity of the growth in its New American population. According to a report by the Brookings Institution, three-quarters of all immigrants in the Washington Metro area come from a diverse group of 30 countries.

The Report also states that the region’s immigrants primarily live in moderate and high income neighborhoods rather than the poorest neighborhoods historically associated with immigrants.

An aspect particular to the immigration in the region over the past 10 years is the extent to which it has happened outside the urban areas, the typical location for large scale immigration.

In the 1970’s, the District was home to 25% of all New American population in the metropolitan area. But in the 2000 census, the District was home to only 9%, with more than 70% of the region’s immigrant population living in the inner suburbs.

Ralph Rosenbaum, demographic researcher for the City of Alexandria told the News-Press that his area has one of the most diverse populations in the United States.

While cities like Los Angeles and Miami have a large amount of New Americans, the populations don’t come from as wide a range of countries.

In Northern Virginia 42.6% of New Americans are Asian born, 37.6% from the Americas, 10.5% from Europe, and 9% from African Countries.

Overall Northern Virginia has seen a 396% increase in its New American population since 1980.

Like the rest of the region, the New American population in the City of Falls Church is highly diverse, with 21.5% originating in Europe, 37.9% from Asia, 33.1% from the Americas, and 6.7% from African Countries.

The diverse and quickly rising New American population has caused strains on some areas in Northern Virginia trying to deal with the growth.

JoAnne Rosa, Multicultural Services Initiative Coordinator at the Department of Human Services for the City of Alexandria, has seen how the diversity in the growth in Alexandria’s population has led to new challenges in providing social services for the department.

One of the main challenges has been overcoming the language barrier. Rosa said that language often separates New Americans from the services that they require.

Alexandria has the second highest percentage of New Americans in Northern Virginia, and similar to the rest of Virginia, that population is made up of a wide variety of ethnic groups.

Rosa said that while they were ready to deal with the increase of the Spanish speaking population, they have been surprised by the large amount of growth in other populations. “I don’t know if we were all that aware of it,” said Rosa. “You’re so worried about this one group you don’t realize that there are other groups emerging,” she said.

While federal guidelines require that it is only necessary to provide written translation in a given language if more than 10% of a population speaks that language, it has been necessary for Rosa to provide more comprehensive language options.

The center’s publications, as required, are in both English and Spanish, and two hand-set phones provide language line services when staff cannot provide the necessary translation.

Alexandria government has also made hiring bilingual staff members a priority in order to provide a more capable response to the city’s diverse needs.

While Rosa has lauded the growth as good for Alexandria, she also said that these challenges have not been easy for the city to overcome. “It is a challenge finding funding to pay for the costs of expanding language services,” said Rosa.

In addition to language services, the agency has worked to acculturate its staff to the needs of New Americans. “Everyone needs to be aware of who they are serving and they need to be culturally aware,” said Rosa.

Rosa pointed out that many immigrants either don’t realize that they have access to services or feel a cultural stigma against those services, including programs like drug and alcohol rehabilitation and mental health services.

As part of helping find solutions for different ethnic groups throughout the city, Rosa has worked with leaders that have come forward to represent the individual ethnic groups. These leaders help communicate to their members information about social services, housing opportunities and educational choices.

Rosa said that while her agency has been aware of some of the groups for some time, others are much more recently formed and have impressed upon her the scale of diversity in the region.

Falls Church has also started to face challenges it works to provide language services for the New American residents of the City.

According to the 2000 census there were 142 households in the City that did not speak English. Falls Church has utilized Language Line and the City Manager recently appointed a “Second Language Committee” to identify the City’s future language requirements.

But the overall need in the City for New American services has been relatively small.

Dr. Dennis Hunt, director of the Falls Church-based Center for Multi-Cultural Human Services, which provides acculturation and mental health services in the region, said that even as the New American population has increased dramatically, he has not seen many people from Falls Church.

Dr. Hunt said that while there has always been a trickle of people coming in from Falls Church, the majority come from areas in Fairfax and Arlington Counties.

Although the center is in Falls Church, Dr. Hunt said, “The majority of the work we do is not in Falls Church.” Most of the center’s programs take place off-site throughout Northern Virginia.

So what is the effect of New American growth in Falls Church?

According to the report by the Population Reference Bureau, the effect that a New American will have on a region is largely contingent on that population’s level of education.

The report entitled, “Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America,” studies the fiscal impact of new Americans, calculating the amount a New American will cost in services compared to the amount they will benefit the country through tax revenue.

On average, adult immigrants with less than a high school education impose a net fiscal cost of $89,000 per person over the course of their lifetime. On the other hand, immigrants with more than 12 years of schooling provide a per person lifetime gain of $105,000.

In addition, descendant of immigrants are shown to provide a lifetime net gain whatever the education of their parents.

The effect on the labor market is similar. While New Americans are shown to provide positive gains for the economy and increase economic efficiency, an influx of people willing to work at lower wages depresses U.S. wages and tends to increase income inequality.

Falls Church has managed to get the benefits from a diversifying population without having to deal with many of the perceived challenges.

As the New American population has increased, so has the prestige of the City.

In 1990 Falls Church was ranked 14th in the nation in median household income, 10 years later it has the highest median family income in the United States at $97,225.

Falls Church also ranks first in the United States in the percentage of its population with college degrees at 63.7% and second behind Los Alamos, NM in the percentage of its population with advanced degrees at 33.8%.

In addition, while most of Northern Virginia has seen a clustering of its various ethnic populations, New Americans in Falls Church are generally less associated with an ethnic group.

Carol Jackson from the Falls Church Housing Corporation said that there is a different dynamic for New Americans moving into the City.

“People who move to Falls Church often want to associate themselves with the City,” said Jackson. She indicated that the impetus to move into the City often takes precedence over the desire to remain deeply associated with a particular ethnic group.

In an email to the News-Press Dionne Williams, Communications Director for the City of Falls Church said that the only ethnic group that has worked specifically with the City has been the Vietnamese community, which meets with the city manager and police chief to address their constituent’s needs.

But the City’s economy has also managed to benefit from New American populations willing to provide a labor force for the growing economy.

Because of the surrounding diversity right outside the city limits–including the Seven Corners area where nearly two-thirds of the population was born outside the United States–Falls Church has consistently attracted workers willing to fill the variety of employment opportunities inside the City. As a result the relative homogeneity of the City hasn’t limited the City’s economic growth.

Demographic researchers are unsure about what the future of the City will be in regards to its New American and minority populations.

Much of the City’s future demographics rest with how the housing market affects minority and New American accessibility to the City.

In upcoming articles the News-Press will look at the effect that an aging population has on the dynamic and resources of the City, the impact that the growth in New Americans has on the City’s schools, and what the effect of the housing market will be on these issues.