The number of immigrants arriving to the United States is greater than at any time in the nation's history, and they are increasingly settling in all parts of the country -- from Washington, D.C., suburbs to small towns in Arkansas. Michael Jones-Correa, professor of government, has been immersed in two projects that address these dramatic demographic shifts: the first, a study of the increasing ethnic diversity of American suburbs and its implication for local and national politics; and, the second, the first-ever state-by-state geo-coded survey of Latinos in the United States.

The extensive survey, conducted with each respondent for more than 40 minutes by phone, drew 8,600 responses. The sheer number allows Jones-Correa and his co-principal investigators to compare the survey's findings at the metropolitan, state and national levels.

"From 1990 to 2000 there was a huge rise in immigrant populations, more than half of these from Latin America and Mexico," says Jones-Correa. "A lot of them are settling in places that have not seen an influx of new immigrants in over a century. Places like Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and Washington state."

The Latino survey, completed in 2006 and due to be released for public use by fall 2007, allows researchers to compare new settlement areas like North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa with that of older immigrant areas like Texas, California, Florida and New York.

"We ask, 'What do you think about your school?' and have information about the school district in which your children go to school. We ask about crime and can place the response in the context of county crime data and U.S. Census data," says Jones-Correa. "When we release this information, we'll know the Congressional district, school district, crime rate statistics by county, and the racial makeup of the area in which each respondent lives, among other data, and that lets us place a response or an attitude into a context. It's a much richer way to understand public opinion."

The data will serve both an academic and an applied mission. Jones-Correa and his colleagues held more than a dozen community focus groups before conducting the survey and are following up with "dissemination" meetings with similar groups across the country. Data also was presented Feb. 16 to the House Democratic Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Capitol Hill in a briefing for representatives and staffers.

Jones-Correa's project on diversity in suburbia focuses on the Washington, D.C., metro area, where he conducted 113 interviews. He is looking at the impact of immigrant suburbanization both on immigrants themselves and on comfortably middle-class suburbs that suddenly have to deal with the ethnic and linguistic diversity in their midst.