For much of the Twentieth Century, six states in the U.S.—New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey—have been the settling places for most of the nation’s new citizens. However, over the past decade, twenty-two other states have experienced extremely rapid growth in their immigrant populations. A new report from The Century Foundation examines the experience in five of those “gateway” states: North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Taken together, these state papers paint a clear picture about how the absence of a functional federal immigration system has created enormous difficulties for other levels of government.

Immigration’s New Frontiers: Experiences form the Emerging Gateway States looks at how, in the absence of federal immigration policy, these “new destination” states have tried to fend for themselves in addressing a range of challenges posed by both documented and undocumented immigrants, many of whom have limited English and low incomes. The state studies show how communities have dealt with the challenges created by the new immigrants in policy and service areas such as law enforcement, health care, housing, education, and workers rights.

 While the differences in the experiences reflect such distinctions among the states as the home countries and settlement patterns of the immigrant populations, the local economic conditions, governance traditions, and the political environment, the case studies share three overriding themes:

• All states initially sought to accommodate new immigrants—in some cases actively welcoming them and recruiting more to enter the states to help their economies, while supporting policies geared toward making their lives better.

• All of the states became more ambivalent toward the immigrants over time, adopting a more combative posture and policies that discouraged their acceptance into mainstream society. Often that reaction was assisted or promoted by outside activists opposed to reforms that would provide a path for undocumented workers to become legal residents.

• None of the states has managed to find effective solutions to any of the major public policy challenges posed by undocumented immigration.

Immigration’s New Frontiers

The report makes clear that many of the problems experienced by the states are due to a lack of coherent public policy, experience with integrating immigrants, and/or the resources to address the distinct challenges immigration introduces. “States and localities are ill equipped to tackle on their own the challenges that both legal and illegal immigration presents,” say co-editors Greg Anrig and Tova Wang. “Workable solutions will be extremely difficult to come by until the federal government develops effective policies that in one way or another enable states and localities to be confident that their residents are almost all legally in the country.”

The state studies were written by the following contributors:

Georgia: Stephanie A. Bohon, associate professor of sociology, University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Iowa: Mark A. Grey, professor of anthropology, University of Northern Iowa and director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration.

Minnesota: Katherine Fennelly, professor of public affairs, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota.

Nebraska: Lourdes Gouveia, director of Latino/Latin American studies and professor of sociology, University of Nebraska at Omaha.

North Carolina: Paula D. McClain, professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American studies at Duke University.

The editors are:

Greg Anrig, vice president for program, The Century Foundation

Tova Wang, democracy fellow, The Century Foundation

The report’s introduction, as well as author bios is available online at The Century Foundation Web site, www.tcf.org and its immigration project site at www.immigrationline.org. The editors and paper authors are available for interviews. Specific state studies are available to media on request. Please contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723 for more information.

Immigration’s New Frontiers: Experiences from the Emerging Gateway States

Edited by Greg Anrig, Jr., and Tova Andrea Wang

A Century Foundation Report

240 pages, $15.95 paper ISBN 0-87078-506-0