It’s no secret that Nashville is fast becoming an international city.

However, unlike those relocating from other states, Nashville’s growing immigrant population is due primarily to civil and political unrest. Music City has the largest Kurdish population of any major U.S. city and roughly nine in 10 immigrants arrive here from three countries – Iraq, Burma and Bhutan – according to data from the Refugee Services arm of Catholic Charities in Nashville.

The remaining 10 percent are coming from Somalia, Cuba, DR Congo, Ethiopia and Sudan and Eritrea [bordered by Sudan and Ethiopia], Catholic Charities’ numbers show, and most have resettled here over the last three years.

Less than 20 years ago, the city’s make-up was mainly Southerners with a smattering of restaurants catering to other cultures — Mexican, certainly, but not many Ethiopian or Vietnamese eateries that now reflect the current day’s diversity.

It is Hispanic cultural presence that first began to alter Nashville’s diversity landscape.

The 2010 U.S. Census numbers show that Hispanic population for the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to be 6.6 percent, more than twice as high as the 3.1 percent from the 2000 Census. The 13-county MSA includes all or portions of Cannon, Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Hickman, Macon, Robertson, Rutherford, Smith, Sumner, Trousdale, Williamson, and Wilson counties.

Katherine Donato, professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University who studies international immigration patterns, says the migration of Latinos to Nashville is not particularly new. Indeed, if signs along Nolensville Road are quick to reflect the growing Spanish-speaking community, then the 2010 Census numbers are correct.

“There’s been dramatic and substantial migration to Nashville since the 1990s. It’s not new anymore, but it continues,” Donato says.

Not surprisingly, says Donato, there are large numbers of Spanish speaking [people] mostly coming from Mexico, but she points out that would be unfair to describe the Latin American immigrant as a lower-skilled immigrant doing lower skilled work. What is surprising to the Vanderbilt professor is that Nashville is attracting the foreign-born with high and low skill sets nearly equal in numbers.

“While on the one hand there are large numbers of lower-skilled immigrants coming in, at the same time there are large numbers of higher-skilled immigrants coming to Nashville,” Donato says. “That is not something every city can claim, but I think it definitely reflects the economy of Nashville.

“It has a fairly new economy; it’s not like Detroit that’s linked to one specific industry. It’s a fairly new city. It looked very different 30 years ago.”

– Colleen Creamer