Influx of immigrants reshapes Sacramento suburbs

This article shows how immigrants are changing the suburbs, not just the cities. This is exactly like immigrants have done ever since the country started. DP

By Susan Ferriss

sacbee.com: There may be fewer McDonald's and Wienerschnitzel eateries.

And if suburban Sacramento is any indication, Middle America is in for more Asian noodles and octopus, and Mexican chiles and pickled cactus.

U.S. suburbs are getting an ethnic makeover as more immigrants leave traditional big-city ethnic enclaves and head to the 'burbs to forge their American dream.

The Sacramento region – and eight other U.S. metropolitan areas – are featured as examples of the phenomenon in a new book, "Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America."

"As the nation as a whole becomes more suburban, so do immigrants," said Robin Datel, a California State University, Sacramento, geography professor who co-wrote the book's chapter about Sacramento with her husband, Dennis Dingemans. He's a retired geography professor at the University of California at Davis.

In the past, the book points out, it was the offspring of immigrants who moved out of cities, many of them abandoning their cultural practices.

Today, immigrants from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis to Charlotte, N.C., are going suburban and taking their tastes with them.

Datel and Dingemans pointed out a once-derelict strip mall along Stockton Boulevard now dominated by Vietnamese and other Asian shops. Latino businesses are starting to "spill over," Datel said, from more traditional Latino zones.

In the Little Vietnam Plaza, near 65th Street, Pho Anh Dao noodle shop manager Henry Ha said he often shops for vegetables for his restaurant at La Victoria Mercado and Carniceria, several doors down.
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