While the D.C. region has become a hotbed for immigrants, the inner core of the region has been losing them, according to new research by the Brookings Institution.

In what has become a national trend, suburbs — particularly those farthest from the urban center — are absorbing most of the area’s growing foreign-born population, which has quadrupled in less than three decades.

When it comes to the Washington region, 71 percent of the 1.1 million-member immigrant population resides in just three counties: Montgomery and Prince George’s in Maryland, and Fairfax in Virginia.

In sharp contrast, the proportion of immigrants living in the District, Arlington and Alexandria is on the decline, according to the just-released book “Twenty-First Century Gateways.”

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The precise decline in immigrants moving to these jurisdictions is not something Brookings researchers tracked nor is it readily available. But the drop is marked and could increase further as immigrant population soars in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Fairfax, according to experts.

“D.C. will always have some diplomats and, therefore, a distinct immigrant population,” said Randy Capp, senior research associate at the D.C.-based Urban Institute. “But for working-class immigrants, they’re not paid as well, so they have an increasingly difficult time affording housing in D.C. and some of these places in Virginia. That’s why you have more and more of this suburbanization.”

Marie Price, chair of George Washington University’s geography department and a co-author of the Brookings book, said the suburbs are becoming what major urban cities were years ago because that’s where the jobs are.

In the Washington region, job growth was strong between 1990 and 2000 coinciding with the biggest flood of immigrants. At that time, too, the growth was focused most heavily in the suburbs, Price said.

Although the District maintains a vast and continually increasing job sector, three-quarters of the jobs in the region are outside of D.C.

Also key to the outer suburban immigration influx is the social and political climate.

“Most prominently in Montgomery, the county has really reached out to immigrants and incorporated them,” she said. “The immigrants have been successful ... and success begets success.”

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com