Foreign Born

Katie Shaifer walked slowly down the dim hallway of the Korean Social Service building in Seoul. Stay cool, Katie, she kept telling herself. Don't get too excited. The agency had handled Katie's adoption to a West Mount Airy couple nearly 20 years before. Now, she was back in South Korea, and behind an office door were the brothers and sister she had left behind. Don't get your hopes up, Katie repeated like a mantra. Maybe they want to meet you. . . . Maybe they'd rather forget.

Foreign-born high school soccer players, scattered throughout South Jersey, have added more than cultural diversity to the teams on which they play. Junior Frank Tweneboa, 15, is a case in point. Born in Ghana, West Africa, the Pennsauken forward has given the Indians (2-6 overall, 1-4 conference), a young team in the Olympic Conference Patriot Division, a reason to be excited about playing even though postseason possibilities are slim. Tweneboa has scored 13 of the team's 22 goals with a scintillating style of play that he learned as an 8-year-old member of Ghana's under-12 national team.

Since the inception of the Masters in 1934, non-Americans have never won all four major golf tournaments in one year. So far this year, Spain's Jose Maria Olazabal won the Masters; South Africa's Ernie Els won the U.S. Open and Zimbabwe's Nick Price won the British Open. If a foreign-born player captures the PGA Championship, which tees off today at Southern Hills Country Club, it would give the rest of the world a sweep of the modern-day grand slam. "From a player's standpoint, I don't go out there and worry about it," said American Lanny Wadkins.

In the last four decades, Pennsylvania's population of foreign-born residents plunged further and faster than that of every other big industrial state, a new Census Bureau report has found. At the same time in New Jersey and nationwide, the share of residents who were born abroad or whose parents were foreign-born soared to its highest number in history, powered partly by an exuberant economy in the last decade. The divergent trends in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the nation - caused largely by economic changes in the area - are contained in a new 477-page Census Bureau report on the foreign-born population, compiled for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and released today.

Characteristics of the immigrant population suggest that any notion the United States still is a "melting pot" should be shelved for good, according to a new Census Bureau report. Rather than one blend of immigrants, the foreign-born population today is a patchwork quilt of vastly different qualities. That population, which increased by 40 percent between 1980 and 1990, shows "sharply varying levels of social-economic well-being," according to the Census Bureau, which today released a detailed report on the demographics of the nation's 19.8 million immigrants.

Zaineb and Faizal Zekeria don't look like the living evidence of a potentially nation-altering trend. They look like two newlyweds in love. But their year-old union is hand-holding proof of how a massive influx of immigrants is changing who marries whom, and why, and challenging the idealized notion of America as a multicultural melting pot. Increasingly, a new study shows, U.S.-born Asians and Hispanics are choosing to wed foreign-born members...

Lured by plentiful jobs in a strong economy, the number of immigrants in the United States reached its highest level in decades last year, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated yesterday. About 28.38 million people living in America, or more than 10 percent of the population, were born outside the country, according to the bureau's latest annual estimate. The last time the rate was so high was during the 1930 census, when 11.6 percent of the population had roots abroad. "It's the economy, both a push and pull," said University of Michigan demographer William Frey, an expert on immigration.

The Afghan was speaking in Iranian to the Iranian. Four Soviet Jews were inside a car playing debertz, which, loosely translated, is a Russian form of poker. A Nigerian, attaching cables to his battery, was looking for a good Samaritan. The Haitians were talking about accounting, which is what they used to do. They are all cabdrivers, foreign trawlers in traffic hoping to haul someone to a casino and not just downtown. They're at the airport and at 30th Street Station, in front of hotels and bus stations.

SAN FRANCISCO FOREIGN-BORN BETTER STUDENTS Foreign-born children of immigrants fare better in school than U.S.-born children of immigrants, partly because they have not had time to pick up bad study habits, according to a study published yesterday. The study of second-generation immigrants - the largest of its kind ever done - also found that children of immigrants do better in school than their American classmates. The study, by Michigan State University sociology professor Ruben Rumbaut and Johns Hopkins University sociology professor Alejandro Portes, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here.

Ki J. Kim lifted her frail hands from her lap and brought them together as if in prayer. A smile, ever so slight, formed across her creased face. With the help of a translator, the 92-year-old Korean American said she was very thankful; she has everything she could want or need. Kim, who spent the better part of her life in Cherry Hill, is one of 27 residents of Innova Health & Rehab's Korean care unit, which opened May 15 in Mount Laurel. With a capacity of 40, it caters to the language and lifestyle needs of Korean Americans, said the Rev. John Sung, the unit's director and founder.

Ki J. Kim lifted her frail hands from her lap and brought them together as if in prayer. A smile, ever so slight, formed across her creased face. With the help of a translator, the 92-year-old Korean American said she was very thankful; she has everything she could want or need. Kim, who spent the better part of her life in Cherry Hill, is one of 27 residents of Innova Health & Rehab's Korean care unit, which opened May 15 in Mount Laurel. With a capacity of 40, it caters to the language and lifestyle needs of Korean Americans, said the Rev. John Sung, the unit's director and founder.

As the U.S. Senate heard testimony Wednesday on legislation to toughen proof-of-identity requirements for driver's licenses, immigration lawyers and officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation met in Philadelphia to scrutinize the process of deciding who gets a license here. "Driver's licenses can be the keys to the kingdom for terrorists bent on death and destruction," Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "States have a responsibility to ensure licenses are tamper-proof and issued only to people whose identity and legal status can be verified.

New Jersey trails only California and Texas in the recent explosive growth of its immigrant population, according to a study to be released today. But the state's nonnatives appear to be more affluent than immigrants elsewhere in the country, the study notes. And the Garden State's immigrants arrive legally in greater numbers - and receive government services somewhat less often. The number of immigrants in New Jersey, both legal and illegal, has jumped by almost 600,000 since 2000, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

By week's end, the media swarm had left Cherry Hill. Birdsong punctuated the morning calm on streets such as Mimosa Drive and Tampa Avenue, where young men alleged to be the architects of a terrorist plot had until recently lived. Everyday life resumed. But among the people who shop, work or reside in this increasingly diverse and particularly suburban suburb, last week was a too-close-to-home reminder of the post-9/11 world. A world where things may not be what they seem. A precarious world where the person who drove you to the airport or fixed your roof could be a terrorist, and where a guy who works at Circuit City is a hero.

Zaineb and Faizal Zekeria don't look like the living evidence of a potentially nation-altering trend. They look like two newlyweds in love. But their year-old union is hand-holding proof of how a massive influx of immigrants is changing who marries whom, and why, and challenging the idealized notion of America as a multicultural melting pot. Increasingly, a new study shows, U.S.-born Asians and Hispanics are choosing to wed foreign-born members...

Anne O'Callaghan is executive director of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians It's a few minutes before midnight on Dec. 31, 2014. A festive crowd at Penn's Landing, ready for fireworks, wildly applauds the popular outgoing mayor as he steps up to address the crowd: "Fellow Philadelphians, as we gather to celebrate the dawn of a new year, I can't help reflecting on where our city was and how far it has come. We have much to celebrate. "Take a look around - there are more of us. After 50 years of population loss, the City of Brotherly Love is growing again.

Talk to Earl Mathes about the George Washington boys' soccer team, and within minutes he smiles. The Eagles coach's joy isn't just because his defending Public League champion squad has a 10-1 record. A lot of it has to do with his having the opportunity to coach possibly the most ethnically diverse team in Southeastern Pennsylvania. "My team is truly the United Nations," Mathes said. "I absolutely love it. It's kind of cool. You got all these kids [and] so many different personalities.

In the Mecklenburg County jail, an inmate in an orange jumpsuit puts his finger on an electronic pad and watches his fingerprint appear on a computer screen. Within minutes, the computer returns a name - Arturo Romero - with photographs and a rap sheet that details a history of petty offenses and illegal entries into the United States from Mexico. Romero, arrested here for having an open container of beer in a vehicle, now faces a trip to an immigration detention center in Atlanta and deportation to Mexico.

Foreign-born high school soccer players, scattered throughout South Jersey, have added more than cultural diversity to the teams on which they play. Junior Frank Tweneboa, 15, is a case in point. Born in Ghana, West Africa, the Pennsauken forward has given the Indians (2-6 overall, 1-4 conference), a young team in the Olympic Conference Patriot Division, a reason to be excited about playing even though postseason possibilities are slim. Tweneboa has scored 13 of the team's 22 goals with a scintillating style of play that he learned as an 8-year-old member of Ghana's under-12 national team.

President Arnold Schwarzenegger? Some fans of the California governor like the sound of that so much that they are joining a growing movement to allow foreign-born citizens to be president. Schwarzenegger, the former actor and bodybuilder, grew up in Austria and became a U.S. citizen in 1983. Under provisions of the Constitution, he - like Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, Sen.-elect Mel Martinez, Commerce Secretary nominee Carlos M. Gutierrez, and every other immigrant - is ineligible for the presidency.