Retro Local

- [Narrator] Long before statehood, Alaska's residents were indigenous.

Today, besides the original residents, the great land is home to people from all over the world.

By 2010, US census data showed parts of the state had the most culturally diverse schools and neighborhoods in the United States.

So how did that happen?

Researchers point specifically to policy decisions made by federal lawmakers and a few major economic developments.

- It begins to answer these questions, how did Alaska or Anchorage, particularly, become a hundred language city?

- [Narrator] Dr. Katie Ringsmuth is a history professor who's conducted extensive research at the NN cannery in South Naknek.

She's been working to get the building on the National Park Services National Register of Historic Places.

Over more than 100 years of business, the cannery reflected a cross section of Alaska life.

Workers from up the river and across the ocean came to work in one of the largest salmon fisheries in the world.

In the cannery buildings, the tangible signs are everywhere.

You can find Croatian flags, graffiti in Spanish, and equipment named after Chinese workers.

- You might hear 15, 16 different languages on the dock.

You know, you are experiencing this cosmopolitan place, perhaps even more cosmopolitan than Seattle itself, where I came from.

- [Narrator] Alaska's fisheries powered an economic engine that drew workers from around the world.

Despite the diversity found at canneries and other work sites, for much of the 20th century, most permanent Alaska residents were indigenous or white.

US immigration laws and trade policies restricted a change, and then... - By the 1960s, those restrictions were relieved and all of a sudden you see Japan coming in to process the egg roll.

Which became the most, that saved canneries in Alaska.

- [Narrator] The effects rippled through Alaska canneries and the rest of the state.

Major interconnected changes came in a single decade.

Alaska became a state in 1959.

By the 1960s, post World War II import, export restrictions had been lifted, and in 1965, the Federal Heart Seller Act repealed the country's national origin immigration quotas, opening doors to more people from more places.

Especially non European countries.

The policy transformed the face of America, according to the non profit Migration Policy Institute.

Meanwhile, a massive new industry gathered momentum in the 49th state.

Instead of fish, it was fuel.

The new jobs and accelerating economic activity combined with the nation wide shift in immigration policy to reshape Alaska.

92 year old Anchorage resident, Pacita Agron, saw it all unfold.

She immigrated to Alaska on the eve of statehood to join her husband Fred, a US Army veteran.

- I came to Alaska on February 29, 1959.

- [Narrator] At the time, she said, they were one of the few Filipino families settled in Anchorage.

- This is one and that is mine.

- [Narrator] While plenty of bachelors had come to work at the canneries, and gold mines, and military bases over the years, few had settled down to start families.

Then, just a few years after the 1965 immigration act, Humble Oil and the Atlantic Richfield Company found oil on the North Slope.

The rush was on.

- That was when the gas was already getting better and better, so they came here to work.

- [Narrator] The construction of the Trans Alaska pipeline brought a flood of newcomers to Alaska.

People came to Alaska specifically for the jobs.

The changes in federal immigration policy allowed many to stay.

The state's Filipino population expanded significantly in the 70s and 80s, Agron recalls.

So did the rest of the population.

US census data shows Alaska grew from around 400,000 residents in 1980, to around 550,000 by 1985.

By 2010, census data showed parts of Anchorage had become the most cultural diverse neighborhoods in the United States.

- This is where my family is.

I like to stay in Alaska.

Alaska is my home.

My second home.

My home is in the Philippines.

(laughs) My second home.

- [Narrator] Today, Alaska is a second home to people from all over the world.

Approximately 100 languages are spoken in Anchorage schools and family ties wrap around the globe.

Ringsmuth, the history professor, says it all comes back to the same thing.

- Even though people live in distant places, we're still connected and it's the history that does that.

And the more we investigate and understand our past, I think the closer that brings us together.

- [Narrator] The 2010 census showed just how much Alaska has changed since 1965.

The 2020 census will reveal how that history continues to impact the state today.