Where We Come From -- Around Seattle, Natives Of State Find Themselves In The Minority

The chest-beating starts early. Newborns check out of Stevens Memorial Hospital in Edmonds wearing T-shirts proclaiming them "Washington Natives." Older braggarts tout their Washington birth status on bumper stickers, dresses and swim trunks - all to identify themselves as the real thing.

This is a decidedly I-was-here-first phenomenon. You don't find this sort of crowing in, say, Pennsylvania or Mississippi, where most people are native-born.

Not so here. The latest release of census data shows more than half the 2.6 million Seattle metropolitan-area residents were born elsewhere: 5 percent were born in the Northeast, 7 percent in the South, 14 percent in the Midwest, 17 percent in other Western states. And 8 percent were born outside the United States, a figure steadily increasing for 20 years.

Washington ranks 14th among states with large foreign-born populations. (California, with 22 percent foreigners, is first; Mississippi, 1 percent, is last).

In fact, the 8.7 million immigrants who arrived in the United States during the 1980s made up the largest net immigration in history, said Jeff Passel of the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit policy research group.

The Seattle area got a big piece of the wave. More than 80,000 foreigners moved here during the past decade. Another way of putting it: 40 percent of the area's foreign-born residents arrived in the 1980s.

This influx of foreign-born is part of the latest trend in a population boom that experts say this region has been riding for much of the past 50 years.

"Since 1940, Washington has grown at twice the national average," said Richard Morrill, a University of Washington geography professor who studies the census. "What is happening is the source of migration has changed."

Early in the century, the stream was primarily from the Midwest, especially Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. At one point, experts say, 70 percent to 80 percent of newcomers came from the Midwest. Many were immigrants who stopped in the Midwest before following the railroads west to timber and fishing jobs, said Roger Sale, author of "Seattle: Past to Present."

Since World War II, migration patterns shifted South and West; for example, Louisiana and Texas, where experts say many of the region's blacks came from. Many of these people came during the war to work in the military and shipyards and for Boeing. And California, of course, has become a much more important source of newcomers since 1950.

Despite all the growling about growth in the late 1980s, the region actually grew at a faster rate during the 1940s (44 percent), and in the 1950s and 1960s (both 28 percent.) It slowed down in the 1970s (14 percent) and picked up again in the 1980s (22 percent).

They - we - keep coming. During the last five years of the 1980s, 17 percent of the area's population flooded in from somewhere else.

Although the census does not identify the states people moved from (that data arrives next year) it does show what region newcomers formerly called home.

The fewest new arrivals come from the Northeast; they represent 6 percent of those who moved moved to this area since 1985. The Midwest contingent represents 12 percent, while 16 percent streamed in from both the South and abroad.

The biggest migration - half the newcomers - moved from other Western states, continuing the historical pattern of big population exchanges with Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

And with nearly 30 million residents, that also means California. Driver-license data shows Washington is the No. 1 destination for fleeing Californians, with an estimated 50,000 Californians moving in last year - and about half that many going from here to there.

Demographers explain these migration patterns with something called the gravity model. "Most moves are short-distance," said Theresa Lowe, demographer for the state Office of Financial Management. "Some migrants moved over large distances due to the large force of attraction, i.e. a big city."

But gravity alone doesn't explain the preferences of people once they land in the Seattle area. And there, the census shows some definite predilections:

Northeasterners prefer the city's more urbanized neighborhoods, such as Capitol Hill. It has Broadway, nightlife and is about as New York as you can get in Seattle.

Northeasterners also opt for the close-in, often upscale suburbs of Medina, Mill Creek, Mercer Island and Clyde Hill. The UW's Morrill believes this reflects Northeasterners coming here for jobs in Eastside high-tech businesses.

Southerners, who make up a big chunk of the city's black population, move south - Garfield-Madrona, Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley - and southern Puget Sound communities such as Tacoma, Fife, Puyallup and Milton.

Military people stationed at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base decide they like the place and move to Tacoma and its suburbs where housing is more affordable than in King County.

Alki, where the famed Denny party of settlers landed on a rainy November day in 1851, has the city's highest percentage of native Washingtonians. The neighborhood has long thought of itself as separate from Seattle proper.

Downtown has the lowest percentage of folks born here.

WIDE-OPEN SPACES

Throughout the metro area - King, Pierce and Snohomish counties - Westerners and Washington natives show their comfort with wide-open spaces. Milton has the highest percentage of native Washingtonians, followed by other relatively far-flung burgs of Brier, Bonney Lake, Arlington, Snohomish and Enumclaw.

It's not that these places are standing still, with no one moving in. It's just that they attract more in-state movers.

Take Duvall, for example, which grew 280 percent between 1980 and 1990. Eighty-three percent of the newcomers moved from other parts of Washington. These could be folks from Seattle or Bellevue moving to recapture an earlier era. Or they could be people from, perhaps, Spokane, seeking jobs in the Puget Sound area but feeling uncomfortable with the big-city pace of life.

"All of those are far far out, rural or rural-edge places," Morrill said. "Native white types like to go there. I believe a lot of it was people who came to the city (from other places in the state) and moved out to get away from crime and perhaps immigrants."

Westerners from outside the state show up in strongest concentrations in Buckley, Issaquah, Mill Creek and Gig Harbor.

Sale surmises that "Gig Harbor wants to be like Sausalito, Mill Creek wants to be Mill Valley. My guess is that Californians want to find places like what they left."

Foreigners, large numbers of them, are rejuvenating the international flavor of the immigrant neighborhoods of Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley. About half the newcomers who moved to these neighborhoods in the past five years came from abroad.

In the metropolitan area, the influx of foreigners was most pronounced in urban centers. The census found 13 percent of the residents of Seattle and Bellevue were born outside the United States. One of every 10 residents in Lynnwood and Mercer Island is foreign-born.

Nationally, the last huge immigration wave occurred at the beginning of the century, from 1900 to 1910. In those days, most immigrants were European. Today, the newcomers are overwhelmingly Asian and Hispanic.

Still, the census shows the nation's largest ancestry groups are, in order, German, Irish, English and Italian. The Seattle area's largest ancestry follow the national trend - German (27 percent), English (18 percent), Irish (16 percent) - except for Italians. They are the Seattle area's eighth-largest ancestry group.

German influence is most pronounced in the town of Snohomish - 40 percent of the people have German or part-German backgrounds. Other communities where you can probably sell some bratwurst in a few hours: Normandy Park, Milton, Pacific and Puyallup.

People with English roots live in the largest concentrations in Medina, Normandy Park, Clyde Hill and Woodinville. The Irish congregate in Pacific, Mukilteo and Bonney Lake.

DUVALL HAS FRENCH ACCENT

The metropolitan area is 10 percent Scandinavian, 5 percent African American, 5 percent French. The most French communities are Pacific, Bonney Lake and Duvall, named after French logging brothers James and Frances Duvall. African Americans live in largest concentrations in Tacoma, Seattle, Renton and Tukwila.

Beacon Hill-Rainier Valley is solidifying its reputation as the city's international center. Thirteen percent of residents claim Chinese roots, 5 percent Japanese, highest in the region. Smaller numbers of Southeast Asians also have settled in the neighborhood.

Scandinavians, outside Ballard, of course, reside in Arlington, Mukilteo and Lake Stevens.

What about Ballard? After all the "Almost Live" TV comedy show jokes - including numerous jabs at elderly Scandinavian drivers - you wonder: Is Ballard still Scandinavian? Ya sure - 17 percent, highest in the Seattle metropolitan area . But the number of Norwegians, Danes and Swedes with pure Scandinavian ancestry has declined 20 percent since 1980.

For Scandinavian purists, perhaps a more foreboding sign: Last spring, Ballard High School was in the state basketball tournament and KING-TV crews went out hoping to film students doing the old high school yell: "Lutefisk, lutefisk, lefse, lefse: All for Ballard, ya sure, ya betcha."

Problem was, almost nobody knew it. With the Seattle School District's desegregation program and changes in the neighborhood itself, the school has students of 16 different nationalities.

"The cheer was an identification mark for a long time; that's passed I guess," said Mick McDonald, former Ballard High coach who now teaches health classes at the school. "We have better understanding - all kinds of kids of different races growing up together. It's sad, though, the heritage being lost."

No wonder some people feel overwhelmed, or at least believe the changes are coming too fast.

"Being from Washington like I am, this has always been Mayberry with skyscrapers," said Tony Poland, an unabashed California basher who sells the "Washington Native" products with his wife, whom he calls "an alien from London."

By distinguishing folks born here - a concept he borrowed from a Colorado business that cashed in on that state's boom years - he aims to honor the people who built Washington and say something about keeping the place the way it is. Or was.

Poland says newcomers, Californians in particular, have some bad habits.

"I don't throw litter out of my car window," said Poland, born in Ferndale. "I don't cut people off on the freeway. Washington people are just down home, down to earth."

With all due respect for the 47 percent real Washingtonians in the Seattle area, the census, though muddled on many things, is clear on one point: This Mayberry with skyscrapers will not stay the same.

----------------------------- ANCESTRY, ETHNICITY IN THE SEATTLE METROPOLITAN AREA Each percentage point represents about 25,600 people. The census allows people to specify up to two ancestries.

German 27%. English 18%. Irish 16%. Norwegian 8%. Swedish 6%. African American 5%. French 5%. Scottish 4%. Italian 4%. Dutch 3%. Scotch Irish 3%. Danish 2%. Mexican 2%. Polish 2%. Welsh 2%. Chinese 1%. Czech 1%. Filipino 1%. Finnish 1%. French Canadian 1%. Japanese 1%. Korean 1%. Native American 1%. Russian 1%. Swiss 1%. Vietnamese 1%.

Other groups in the Seattle Metro area counted in smaller numbers, but with at least 2,500: Arab, Austrian, Asian Indian, Belgian, Cambodian, Canadian, Cuban, Greek, Guamanian, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Laotian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Romanian, Samoan, Slovak, Thai, Ukranian, West Indian, and Yugoslavian. ------------------------------ LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT HOME IN SEATTLE METROPOLITAN AREA Almost 10% of the metro population - 230,000 people - speaks a language other than English at home. The most prevalent languages are:

Spanish 18%. Chinese 10%. German 10%. Korean 9%. Tagalog (Filipino) 8%. Japanese 6%. French 5%. Vietnamese 5%. Scandinavian languages 4%. ------------------------------ A STATE OF CHANGE The percentage of Washington-born residents in the state has generally been increasing, while the percentage of foreign born is on the way back up after a sharp decline.

YEAR WASHINGTON FOREIGN

BORN BORN 1910 23% 22% . 1930 36% 16% . 1950 42% 8% . 1970 48% 5% . 1990 48% 7% .

Source: U.S. Census

Statistical research and analysis provided by Seattle Times researcher Tim Rice.