Richard Herman's kids sang a special birthday song for him, earlier this week. Nathan and Isabella were blending a tune from the culture of their American father with a new set of lyrics in the tongue of their Taiwanese mother. Schools in Brecksville, Solon and Strongsville, among others, have started Chinese classes, to meet the needs of area parents who want to preserve the family heritage. Richard Herman, who as an immigration lawyer is well connected with such newcomers, says these classes target a growing community in Northeast Ohio.
Richard Herman: You're looking at 30-40,000 Chinese. With the other Asian groups together, you're probably looking at, total, maybe 70,000. Most of these are professional families. Very focused on family unity. Very focused on education.
Audrey Singer tracks such trends for the Brookings Institution. She studies the impact of immigrant populations on American cities for the Washington-based think tank, and she's especially interested in the qualities that make some cities into immigration magnets.
Audrey Singer: People talk about "eds" and "meds" as attractors of immigrants, who are going to get their B.A. or their MD. And maybe stay to find a job.
This region is attracting a growing number of those highly educated professionals, due to the rise of the medical industry, and an increase in foreign students attending area colleges. Singer says it's starting to change the local ethnic mix.
Audrey Singer: If you look at the list of places where people come from, India is the number one country of origin for immigrants in Greater Cleveland.
The presence of that community can be seen in the racks of Asian Indian music and movies at the Strongsville branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library system. Branch manager Cindy Bereznay says she sometimes has to help re-shelve the returned DVD's and CDs.
Cindy Bereznay: A lot of what we have in Hindi music are the soundtracks of Indian movies, and they go in and out like crazy. They're very popular.
Tracey Strobel: For many ethnic groups, when they first come to the area, the library is their first stop.
Tracey Strobel is Deputy Director of the County Library system, and she says the various branches serve a wide variety of Northeast Ohio newcomers.
Tracey Strobel: One great success story is Mayfield. There's a Russian population there who are very avid library users. The number of circulations per item is higher than the print items that we offer in English.
Sanjiv Kapur's parents came to America from the Indian state of Punjab in the 1950s. Today, he and his wife are raising a new generation in Solon. Kapur says another sign of a growing immigrant presence Northeast Ohio can be found when you're looking for a place to eat.
Sanjiv Kapur: When we moved here, there was only one Indian restaurant here, in 1990. And now, there are probably about ten.
But, Kapur believes that the various cultural clues of a demographic shift, seen in places like restaurants and libraries, point to an opportunity that could transform the rusted, old world economy of Northeast Ohio.
Sanjiv Kapur: If you look at the cities that are doing well right now - New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Houston - they all have large influxes of immigrants.
And many immigrants these days sport white collars, and work in front of computer screens.
Richard Herman: Look who started Google... eBay... Yahoo. Foreign nationals! They get an idea, they're hungry, and they're not risk-averse.
Richard Herman says there needs to be a concerted effort to recruit more of these immigrants to Northeast Ohio. The Russian-born founder of Google, the French-born founder of eBay, and the Taiwanese-born founder of Yahoo are all American transplants whose new ideas helped create billion-dollar companies, in suburbs not that much different than Solon or Strongsville. This afternoon, delegates attending the Changing Cities conference will get a chance to tour these and other area towns, where people are dancing to the beat of a different drummer. David C. Barnett, 90.3.