New Faces, Accents Reshaping County

Immigrants Steadily Transform Political and Economic Landscape

You won't find Le Van Hung Avenue on a Fairfax County street map.

It's actually not a street but a row in the parking lot of the Eden Center, the extraordinary shopping village off Wilson Boulevard in the Seven Corners section of Falls Church, where you can get a world-class Vietnamese meal or a herbalist who will listen to your pulse for free on the weekends.

Every row in the massive parking lot carries a name that resonates in some way with Fairfax's 23,000 Vietnamese residents. Hung was a South Vietnamese Army general who committed suicide on April 30, 1975, rather than endure surrender to the North Vietnamese communists.

But a map isn't necessary to understand that diversity is remaking Fairfax County. In 1950, the U.S. Census recorded 88,712 whites and 9,700 African Americans in Fairfax, constituting 99.8 percent of the population.

A third category, "Other," totaled 145.

A half-century later, Fairfax is a community of "Others." By 2004, one of every four of its more than 1 million residents was foreign-born, according to census estimates. Among its 140,000 Asians are 28,000 Koreans and 17,750 Chinese. Its 106,000 Latinos include 20,000 Salvadorans and 12,000 Mexicans.

Nearly 40 percent of Fairfax's children under 18 have at least one foreign-born parent, twice the national average. More than 100 languages are spoken by families with children enrolled in public schools, from Spanish to Twi (Ghana) to Marathi (western India, including Bombay).

Their story has become an integral part of the political conversation in Fairfax. At an April 4 budget hearing, School Board Chairman Ilryong Moon, a former Korean ESL student, ended his plea to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for additional funding on a vivid autobiographical note. Speaking of himself in the third person, he recounted his family's financial struggles and the two jobs his mother held, including one as a janitor in a small private school on Little River Turnpike.

"On one day, during his eighth-grade year, when he was under heavy pressure from his school to bring tuition that his family did not have, his mother took him to a jewelry store in the market, took from her fingers the rings that were cherished gifts from her husband, and sold them to come up with the money," Moon said. "His parents believed that, when times were hard, we might eat less and we might clothe less, but we should never educate less."

His audience and many other politicians are aware of the power of such appeals. The path to elected office runs through the county's immigrant communities. On election night 2003, victorious Democratic candidates took turns thanking various groups for their financial help and grass-roots support. "I love Korean people!" exulted Del. J. Chapman Petersen.

"I met with Pakistanis, Muslims, Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Palestinians, Hispanics, Laotians, Chinese . . ." said Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D-At Large), recounting his campaign. Wedged among the corned beef and cabbage on the buffet table at his annual St. Patrick's Day fundraiser last month at the Kena Temple in Mantua was a bowl of hummus, courtesy of Marwan Burgan, an Arab American on the staff of Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason). Burgan brings it every year, as a symbolic tribute to the changing face of the county.

Diversity also marks the Fairfax economy. The Census Bureau reported last week that the number of African American-owned businesses increased by more than 52 percent between 1997 and 2002 to 5,091, a bigger increase than the national average of 45 percent. Hispanic-owned firms grew by more than 47 percent in the same period, to 7,302. In each case, more than 90 percent of the enterprises are sole proprietorships, according to the census.