By SUSAN GAST
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Across metro Atlanta, even in the farthest outskirts, immigrants from around the world have established new homes and careers. Gone are the days in which they were a remarkable curiosity. Atlanta is a growing and maturing international community.

From 1990 to 2000, the 20-county metro area's foreign-born population jumped 278 percent, to 423,105, according to the Census Bureau. Some of that growth is reflected in the already established multicultural strongholds along Buford Highway, in Chamblee and Doraville.

The increased presence is not limited to those areas, however. From Carroll and Douglas counties on Atlanta's west to Rockdale and Walton on the east, from Coweta on the south to Forsyth and Pickens on the north, the number of residents born in other countries has skyrocketed.

"It's no longer just the core counties that are growing," said Jeffrey Humphreys, director of economic forecasting at the University of Georgia. "Immigrants are settling in the suburban communities, not only because that is where affordable housing is, it is where the jobs are."

The suburbs also are where good schools are, said Lily Lee, who settled in Gwinnett 20 years ago, mainly because she felt the schools would provide her son with a good education. Originally from China, Lee still lives in the Peachtree Corners community she moved to in 1983.

Accompanying the growth in immigrant population has been an equally staggering growth in those communities' buying power, Humphreys said. The buying power of metro Atlanta's Hispanic population surged 711 percent between 1990 and 2002, compared with a 160 percent increase nationally. The buying power of the Asian population here jumped 358 percent, compared with 152 percent nationally, he said.

Jose Puente, president and CEO of Avenida America Inc., based in Atlanta, said growth in numbers is only part of what's happening.

"The income and types of work have changed, too," he said. "Historically, the majority of Hispanic immigrants worked in low-wage fields -- at restaurants, fast-food businesses, grocery stores, construction. During the last five years they are starting to graduate to the next level of income -- real estate, insurance, accounting, travel and other types of service-related industries."

Opportunities are a large part of what draws people to metro Atlanta.

"I came here for the quality of life," said Guatemala native Daniel Betancourth, who lived in New York before moving south.

"It's a nice place here," Lee said. "A very nice place."