The neighborhoods of Bustleton and Somerton, tucked along Philadelphia’s border with Montgomery and Bucks counties, are home to at least 43,000 immigrants born in Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The concentration is dense enough that the area has earned the nickname “Little Odessa.”
In the ZIP code that includes Somerton, some 41 percent of residents are from Russia or Eastern Europe, census estimates show. For Bustleton the figure is 27 percent. The population includes about 13,000 from Ukraine, 4,900 from Russia, 5,800 from Albania, 3,400 from Uzbekistan, 3,100 from Belarus, 2,700 from Poland and hundreds more from Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Latvia, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and other countries.
Andre Krug, CEO of KleinLife community center in Somerton, said the neighborhoods also draw immigrants from outside Eastern Europe, including more than 10,000 people from India…