Immigrants change face of suburban communities
The Star Ledger 10/24/99
By Juan Forero

Newcomers, Good schools, jobs a powerful lure

Nestled in the Somerset Hills, Bernardsville has long attracted the very rich: New York tycoons who built extravagant estates and ushered in the Gilded Age and later world-famous luminaries like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

In recent years, though, Bernardsville has drawn newcomers from much farther away: Paraguayans from towns with names like Mbocayaty and Caraguatay.

This is the prevailing trend of the 1990s -- immigrants are bypassing the grit of the big cities for suburbia.

In New Jersey -- where more than one in eight residents is foreign-born -- the direct movement of people from most corners of the world to suburban areas has given a decidedly ethnic texture to communities that haven't had an infusion of immigrants in decades.

"Ten years ago, we still would attract attention in Bernardsville, since we were a much smaller group," said Rita Almada, who with husband Baltazar came in 1983 and are considered the first Paraguayans to arrive. "Now, people are used to us. We have kids in schools. We have become more of a melting pot."

The migration of Paraguayans to Bernardsville is one small aspect of one of the largest people-moving pipelines in U.S. history, the emigration of 7.6 million legal immigrants to the United States from 1991 through late 1998. The migrant wave has made the 1990s the second-most numerically significant decade in immigration history, following the 1901-1910 period that saw nearly 8.8 million enter through Ellis Island and other ports.

But the 1990s has seen a growing number of immigrants, most often from Latin America and Asia, sidestep such traditional immigrant hubs as Union City and Elizabeth and head straight to towns in the heart of suburban New Jersey.

Waldwick, a borough of 10,000 in Bergen County, now has a vibrant Salvadoran population.

Bound Brook in Somerset County, which decades ago attracted Italians and Poles, now has America's largest Costa Rican enclave.

In the last two or three years, Turks have established a foothold in Delran in Burlington County.

Highly educated Chinese émigrés, employees of software development and communications research companies, have found a home in Bridgewater.

The flow of immigrants also prompted Artemio Mino to open Mino's Cafe in Bernardsville, where specialties like rice and beans and Paraguayan corn cakes ensure the small diner is crowded with Paraguayan workers on lunch break. Mino, 52, a barrel of a man with thick fingers wearing a cook's white smock, said his year-old business wouldn't have made it without his countrymen -- fellow immigrants who loaned him $20,000 in start-up money and now frequent the eatery.

"I was never worried about clients because I knew a lot of my people are here, and they would help me," said Mino, who also cooks standard American fare along with hearty Latin specialties. "Things have been good, very good. I'm not complaining."

In all, the Census Bureau estimates that 359,843 immigrants arrived in the state from 1990 to 1998, helping push New Jersey's population past 8 million. The increase was significant because it offset the departure of 349,617 Jerseyans in the same period.

In some counties where out-migration of natives was extensive -- like Passaic, Bergen and Essex counties -- the influx of tens of thousands of immigrants helped stabilize the population. Other counties -- like Somerset and Morris, which together saw nearly 30,000 immigrant arrivals -- grew in size largely because of immigrants.

Demographers and immigration experts say many, if not most, of the arrivals come directly from their home countries, attracted by the availability of jobs -- employment found in corporate parks, factories, warehouses, restaurants and hotels spread across suburbia.

"Suburban areas are the areas with the tightest labor shortage, so virtually no unemployment, no surplus labor," said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

In decades past, Hughes said, unskilled labor was attracted to factory jobs in cities. "Now, the economy is far more dispersed, far more de-concentrated, so consequently, immigrants moving into that economy will also disperse."

Aquilino Lopez, a 36-year-old Paraguayan, emigrated straight from his homeland to Bernardsville, knowing that friends would help ease him into a job. He now does landscaping work on a golf course and says he earns enough to pay the rent and raise his family.

"Imagine coming from my country to Bernardsville," Lopez said on a recent day. "Totally different. There's work here. The employers are better to us than in our own country. And here, when you work, little by little you get ahead."

There are other inducements for newcomers, the same ones that long ago brought American urban dwellers to suburbia -- good schools, ample homes and safety.

That's what prompted Salvadoran immigrant Mario Chavez, 42, to move to Ridgewood in Bergen County a year ago, after only a few months in North Bergen, a densely packed community largely populated by immigrants.

"What I liked about the town is the peace and tranquillity here," said Chavez, who cooks for a senior citizens center in the affluent Bergen County town, which is characterized by stately, well-preserved homes. "This place is very sane. The schools are the best. For me, there's no better place to live, Ridgewood and the surroundings."

Edith Amaya, 33 and also from El Salvador, said she and her husband were pleased by the school system in Waldwick and the small-town charms that made the borough a good place to raise children.

"What I like most is the house, that my kids have space, and that they have a good education," said Amaya, who has three children.

Some, like Dario Cabaña, a Paraguayan raising a family in Basking Ridge, simply like the bucolic surroundings. "New Jersey is a lot like Paraguay because there are lots of animals, horses, lots of trees," said Cabaña, who like other Paraguayans pointed out that even the shape of his homeland and New Jersey is similar.

Demographers and immigration experts say immigration to the suburbs has followed a trend that sees low-skilled immigrants heading to towns that are poorer and less desirable than other communities, while highly educated immigrants tend to settle in affluent towns.

"There are many affluent immigrants who are looking for desirable locations as their first place to live, so many people move directly to the suburbs, either to a suburb that is very affordable or to a suburb that is very desirable and they can afford it," said John R. Logan, a State University of New York at Albany sociologist who with colleague Richard D. Alba has studied immigration into suburbia.

"There's a tendency for the Latino immigration to be focused more on older communities in the suburbs, and the Asian migration to be focused more on affluent communities," he said.

Trends, however, are never absolute, as evidenced by the movement of Mexican and Central American immigrants, statistically among the poorest and least educated, into prosperous Princeton. The annual household income in the borough exceeded $74,000 in 1990, but the university town has plenty of restaurants and other service-oriented jobs that low-skill immigrants fill. And then there are the other draws that come with such a town.

"Of course, they're going to come here," said Miguel Centeno, a Princeton University sociologist who has taught about Latin immigrants. "It has an excellent school system, semi-affordable neighborhoods. There are jobs. And there is a kernel of a community that you can belong to."

In some towns, the arrival of immigrants has made neighborhoods more diverse and lively. Features long customary in cities such as ethnic restaurants or Hindu temples or Muslim mosques are not that unusual in places that once were dominated by European culture.

But the flow of people has also created new challenges for communities not accustomed to absorbing large numbers of immigrants.

Schools have had to scramble to find bilingual teachers for immigrant children who speak Spanish or Korean, and, in some cases, less common languages.

In Delran, a township of 13,000 about 10 miles from Philadelphia, the school district this year had to hire a Turkish-speaking bilingual education teacher. The search took administrators to Delaware to find such a teacher.

"Turkish is our biggest non-English speaking group," explained schools Supt. Carl Johnson, noting the district has 42 Turkish students. "About three years ago, we started getting some Turkish students, the number went up last year and it almost doubled this year."

Such stories are becoming more common across the state, where 165 languages are spoken by immigrant school children, and 430 of the state's 618 school districts have children classified as limited English proficient, or LEP.

The cost of providing bilingual aid to more than 48,000 LEP students has risen from $41.6 million in the 1990-1991 school year to $55 million this year. Education officials also note that each newcomer -- immigrant or not -- triggers overall education spending averaging $8,000. Some immigrant children need further attention as well.

"Some of the immigrants that are coming these days might not have had much schooling in their home countries," said Raquel Sinai, coordinator of bilingual education for the state Education Department. "So you have a challenge of educating older kids whose literacy skills are not quite at grade level, even in their own language."

The arrival of some low-skill immigrants to the suburbs has caused friction occasionally between newcomers and long-time residents who contend immigrants are lowering property values and saddling the communities with big-city travails.

"Sometimes, immigrants may go in large numbers into the suburbs, and they kind of overwhelm people who aren't used to the change," said Nestor Rodriguez, co-director of the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston. "You might find people congregating on street corners, and for suburbanites, this is hard."

Jorge de Pinal, a Census Bureau demographer who follows immigration, said conflicts sometimes arise over simple -- and easily corrected -- misunderstandings. "A lot of newcomers don't have the same background and education as the older people, and they don't have like, say, the same etiquette on littering," de Pinal said.

In Waldwick, off busy Route 17 just a few miles south of the Rockland County, N.Y., line, the arrival of dozens of Salvadoran families in the 1990s has prompted town officials to be more vigilant about housing violations. Because the newcomers are poor, they save money by renting homes that have been sectioned off into several living spaces; in Waldwick and elsewhere, the practice is cause for concern because of the possibility of safety and health violations.

"What will wind up happening is a house in a single family zone will wind up being home to 12 to 15 unrelated individuals," said Gary Kratz, Waldwick's administrator for 14 years.

In a two-story house off Harrison Avenue, Alfonso, 54, and his wife, Merida, 45, share a small, makeshift bedroom on the first floor with their daughter and her three small children. The couple, who asked that their last name not be used because of their illegal status, said three bedrooms on the second floor are occupied by other Salvadorans they barely know.

"We have to share with all these people because the living costs are high, but the jobs don't pay well," said Merida, who cares for the children while Alfonso and their grown daughter work in restaurants. "Yes, it's strange, but we are comfortable with it. What can we do?"

Salvadorans are among the least prepared of the new immigrants in New Jersey, having emigrated from an impoverished central American country still reeling from the aftermath of a brutal civil war that ended in the early 1990s. They're known as hard-working and industrious, but Salvadorans are often found in the most menial of jobs, washing dishes or working in warehouses where they can be easily exploited. Census projections show that in New Jersey one of five people from Central American and Mexico is living in poverty.

"It's been hard, very hard for this community," said Cristina Celis, an Uruguayan-born activist who has worked with Waldwick's Salvadorans. "They don't live very well, but they're starting to do better, little by little."

Some public policy experts warn that the wave of low-skilled immigrants has perpetuated a cycle of poverty and might pose serious problems in the future.

A study released last month by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which favors restrictions on immigration, said the number of poor people in immigrant households rose from 2.7 million in 1979 to 7.7 million in 1997. The study also showed that one in four children in poverty nationwide lives in an immigrant household, and that 21.8 percent of immigrants live in poverty, up from 15.5 in 1979.

"The very high poverty rate for new immigrants, as well as the great difficulty so many are having in improving their lot, should be of concern to anyone worried about the persistence of poverty in this country," said Steve Camarota, author of the study.

Still, Camarota agrees with the research compiled in 1997 in an Urban Institute book, "Keys to Successful Immigration," that showed immigrants to New Jersey tend to be better educated, more successful and accepted with greater ease than in other states.

"That's good news," said Camarota. "New Jersey, of all the major immigrant states, had the lowest poverty rate."

Bernardsville is one of the New Jersey communities where the infusion of immigrants has been relatively smooth, with little impact on schools or housing. Mayor Hugh Fenwick likened the migration of the South Americans to the arrival of the Italians who came more than a century ago as stone masons for the industrial giants who first built mansions across the rolling hills.

"Is there any difference in the Paraguayans assimilating as opposed to earlier immigrant groups that arrived in Bernardsville? I don't see any difference," said Fenwick. "They want everything that everyone else wants. They want peace and quiet. They want to go to church. They want to educate their children."

On the surface, it would seem unlikely that a migrant group from Paraguay would find itself in a town like Bernardsville, where some of America's richest people reside.

A decade ago, average household income was $105,000, and 50 percent of workers were executives, managers or other professionals. In the 1990 census, only 26 people -- just 4 percent of the borough's 6,500 residents -- were listed as Hispanics.

But following the footsteps of Rita and Baltazar Almada, who came to Bernardsville on the recommendation of a job placement service, others followed. And the trickle of the 1980s grew into a steady stream through the 1990s. Although no one knows for sure how many Paraguayans arrived, the Rev. Chester Carina of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, said the church's census shows close to 190 Hispanic families today, up from 20 families 10 years ago.

"They came here because there are jobs. That's what brings people. Big houses need three or four people to do work outside, inside," said Nino Ruiz Diaz, 49, a long-time Bernardsville resident and community leader. "Latin workers are wanted here in Bernardsville. They know we are hard workers, honest workers."

Ruiz, who first arrived in New York in 1974 and later moved to New Jersey, is among the Paraguayans who have obtained a remarkable level of success.

He lives past imposing gates, down a gravel road in a lovely Tudor that serves as a guest house to a 20-bedroom mansion that's home to his employer. Ruiz supervises other workers around the house and handles odd jobs while his wife does the cooking.

But they also own a house near the center of Bernardsville, their two boys attend some of the best public schools in the state and their 18-year-old daughter studies at Seton Hall University.

"We live well in this area," said Ruiz. "We have lots of work, and those who work make good money. I know people in New York, and they have needs. But here, we don't have those problems."