A Profile of the Foreign-Born in Lowell, Massachusetts

Prepared by The Urban Institute for the Building the New American Community Project. Support for this report was provided by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Administration for Children and Families.

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

I. Introduction

The Building the New American Community demonstration project is an experiment in refugee and immigrant integration in which the cities of Lowell, Massachusetts; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon formed coalitions to identify integration challenges in their communities and address them collaboratively.¹ These cities were assisted by a national team of policy analysts, advocates, and researchers from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Immigration Forum, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, The Urban Institute, and the Migration Policy Institute.

To assist the coalitions in understanding the size, composition, and characteristics of their newcomer communities, The Urban Institute has prepared a demographic profile of the foreign-born population for each site. These profiles include data on immigrant population growth, diversity, settlement patterns, English language ability, poverty, and naturalization trends. Data on immigrants and refugees can be used as a tool by the coalitions to attract future funding opportunities, target services such as English as a Second Language classes or job training, and strengthen media outreach and advocacy efforts.

This profile of the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, is accompanied by The Urban Institute's publication, The New Neighbors: A User's Guide to Data on Immigrants in U.S. Communities, which can further assist coalition members in finding and using data on the foreign-born in their communities.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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