Their arrival added challenges and benefits. It put strains on school districts and emergency rooms. It provided ready workers for farms, high-tech industries, and landscapers. It raised tensions in places where ethnic groups clashed. But it brought vitality to communities where immigrants rehabbed abandoned houses and launched businesses.
With comparatively few native newcomers, "Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania have benefited from international migration," said Sue Copella, director of the Pennsylvania State Data Center in Harrisburg, the commonwealth's authority on population analysis. They come to Philadelphia through a reemerging gateway for immigration, she said, or "up from Baltimore and down from New York."
Pennsylvania's population grew 3.4 percent from 2000 to 2010, to 12,702,379. Absent Hispanic and Asian newcomers, however, it would not have grown at all.
Among arrivals spurring growth are Dominican immigrants moving from New York for cheaper housing and business opportunities; Mexicans joining friends and family in the established Hispanic enclaves of South Philadelphia, Norristown, and Kennett Square; Asian Indians joining well-established communities in Bensalem; and refugees from Cambodia, Burma, and Nepal being aided in resettlement by the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians or Philadelphia's Nationalities Service Center.
"As far back as 2006, we saw academic studies that showed a substantial portion of workforce growth was attributable to immigrants," said Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, director of outreach for the Welcoming Center. "Those studies backed up what we were seeing on the ground in our work with work-authorized immigrants - people choosing the Philadelphia area as their destination."
The ranks of Hispanics grew 325,572 - a potent 82.6 percent since 2000. They are the state's "fastest-growing minority group," the Data Center reported Friday.
