Why they come to Iowa - a closer look at immigration in Iowa

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They come to Iowa not only for work, but also because of the peace.

“I think a lot of immigrants and refugees are attracted to Iowa because in general, our state has a good economy, so it's pretty easy for them to find better paying jobs than they could find other places,” said Greg White, immigrant and refugee coordinator at the Catherine McAuley Center in Cedar Rapids.

The Catherine McAuley Center provides one-on-one tutoring for adult learners studying English as a second language and a transitional housing program for women.

White said immigrants to the area are particularly attracted by opportunities in the manufacturing sector. He said many of his students work at the Tyson Foods plant in Cedar Rapids or at the Whirlpool Corp. plant in Amana.

The center has clients from more than 50 countries around the world, he said.

“Another reason that they like Cedar Rapids is because it's just a quieter place,” White added. “A lot of our students come from some of the worst atrocities in the 21st century. They want a quiet place to raise their family that has good schools.

“In that sense, Iowa is a really attractive place for them.”

Most of the newer migrants in Iowa, especially since 2008, are refugees, explained Michele Devlin, professor of health promotion and education at the University of Northern Iowa and director of the Iowa Center on Health Disparities.

Refugees - people who have resettled here from areas of conflict - are coming to Iowa from the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan, she said. The state also is seeing a dramatic rise in refugees from Burma, the Himalayas and other similar populations.

Devlin said the migration of various immigrant populations to the state is resulting in micro-pluralities or micro-diversity.

She cited communities such as Marshalltown, which has a meatpacking plant, that now have 50 languages in its school district - “30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 different nationalities within small communities, and usually not in critical mass.”

A lot of the newer populations to Iowa are not tracked in standard databases, Devlin added. A Sudanese or Somali refugee would still be counted in many data systems as being black, she noted.

“A lot of these populations, we don't have accurate numbers. We have general numbers for how many are in communities,” she said.

One reason is that not everyone comes directly to Iowa from his or her nation of origin.

Ann Naffier, regional lawyer with Iowa Justice for Our Neighbors, a ministry which provides services to immigrants, explained the difference between what she and other experts call first-wave and second-wave immigrants.

“Iowa is a very interesting state in that we have some first-wave immigrants, people who come directly to Iowa from their home countries,” she said. “But we also have a larger number of what I call second-wave immigrants, which are immigrants who went first to the more common places that immigrants go - Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Texas, and then move to Iowa.”

Naffier said the countries of origin for immigrant groups coming to Iowa is always changing. The state recently has seen more people from Liberia and Burundi. And there have been many Latinos coming from Central and South America.

In the first seven months of this year, Iowa Justice for Our Neighbors has helped immigrants from 65 different countries. Naffier said a slight majority of the clients her organization serves are Hispanic or Latino.

Her office also regularly helps clients from Africa, Asia, Australia and the United Kingdom.

“We literally have people coming in from around the world,” said Mark Grey, director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration and an anthropology professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

“As long as there is a demand for labor, and those jobs are available and as long as we have a relatively low cost of living and we have available housing, those folks are going to continue to come.”