Immigration has different impacts
Many Americans are concerned about the social and economic
impacts of immigration. Large numbers of immigrants enter the
United States each year, and observers wonder how these persons
affect the availability of jobs, the cost of government
services, and whether their region or neighborhood is becoming
overcrowded. Immigration debates at the national level are often
about whether federal policies on admissions are adequate and
appropriate. But when people talk about immigration at the state
and local level they often are concerned about the impact of
immigration on local economies and governments. Indeed, while
national studies generally find that immigrants pay more in
federal taxes than they use in federally funded services, the
opposite can be true at the local level, where immigrants may be
net users of services because they tend to have children in
relatively costly K-12 schools. All of this raises the question
of whether particular states and locales are getting "too many"
or "too few" immigrants. There are two ways to consider this.
There are states with large numbers of immigrants, and a
different set of states where immigration is a major factor in
population growth. States with large numbers of immigrants are
the so-called "gateway" states: California, New York, Texas,
Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey. Most people strongly
associate these states with immigration. States where
immigration is a large portion of population growth are a
different set and include a large swath of Midwestern states
such as Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that are not
normally considered immigration focal points. In these latter
states, numbers of immigrants may be relatively small, yet they
may have a significant impact due to low growth rates among the
native population. The issues associated with the arrival of
large numbers of immigrants are well known: school districts may
be unprepared, police and fire departments may need to learn to
communicate with new populations, and bilingualism may become
prominent. But the issues associated with the question of
whether immigration forms a large or small portion of population
growth are less discussed. Consider the economic role played by
immigrants as workers. In the factories of Chicago, which is
losing native population, immigrants are more than one out of
four workers, and without their presence those factories might
need to move elsewhere to find needed workers. In Atlanta,
Georgia, a city to which natives are streaming from places like
New York and Philadelphia, the number of service sector jobs has
mushroomed in recent years, and immigrants are an important part
of the labor force that undergirds that expansion. In addition,
states with low native population growth but rapid immigrant
growth may expect greater cultural and linguistic changes than
states where these social changes are diluted because so many
natives are moving in. Immigrants moving into a region may or
may not cause native-born Americans to leave the area. In the
end the question can be of the chicken-or-the-egg type: are
natives leaving an area because it is undesirable, while
immigrants are moving in because they have different
expectations? Or do immigrants "push" out the natives, who flee
in the face of competition from the newcomers? Researchers
debate whether this kind of push-and-pull mechanism explains why
natives have been leaving many metropolitan areas where there is
immigrant growth.
Immigration has different impacts in different states. Usually,
however, this has been interpreted to mean that places with high
immigrant numbers are heavily impacted by immigration, while
areas with low numbers are not. However, immigrant numbers
should be taken in the context of native population growth to
better understand the impact of immigration. A state may have
high immigration, but if it has high native population growth,
some impacts of immigration are diminished. This fact may not
change the attitudes and opinions of persons unhappy about
immigration in booming areas of the south and west like North
Carolina, Georgia, and Nevada. But the truth is that their
immigrant numbers do not translate into the same level of impact
as similar numbers in Michigan, Kansas, or New Jersey. In these
latter states, the foreign born are proving to be more valuable
than ever.
For more information on Immigration please visit the Immigration Resource Center