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Posted May 30, 2015, 12:06 AM
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Rust Belt cities are trying to attract more immigrants
A Lonely Life for Immigrants in America's Rust Belt
May 29th, 2015
By ALANA SEMUELS
Read More: http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015...t-belt/394433/
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Though the Rust Belt was once a hub for immigrants in the 19th century, foreign-born people became rare commodities in the second half of the 20th century. In Cincinnati, for instance, 28 percent of the population in 1880 was foreign-born, according to the Census Bureau. By 1980, only 2.8 percent was.
- Yet just about every city in the Rust Belt is now trying to attract more immigrants to reverse decades of population decline. This trend started in 2011 with Welcome Dayton; Mosaic in St. Louis and Global Detroit recently launched to do the same thing; and, earlier this month, an op-ed in The New York Times proposed encouraging Syrian refugees to resettle Detroit. Not to be left behind, Cincinnati mayor John Cranley announced last year that he wanted to make his city the most immigrant-friendly place in the United States.
- “The economic advantage to the city, if we can figure out how to get more immigrants here, is that it'll be a rising tide that'll lift all boats,” Cranley told me, when we met in his office. “It'll infuse more economic activity, it'll repopulate depressed and blighted neighborhoods that have abandoned buildings, it will bring more flavor to life.” --- The strategy seems to be working in some Midwest cities. Places with relatively small immigrant populations experienced some of the fastest growth rates of foreign-born residents in the last decade, according to the Brookings Institution.
- Cities including Scranton, Indianapolis, and Louisville all doubled their immigrant populations between 2000 and 2010. Dayton has been heralded for its immigrant-friendly policies, which include instructing police not to ask about immigration status when they pull someone over, and it won an award for the U.S. Conference of Mayors for its Welcome Dayton program. --- Still, when politicians talk about attracting immigrants, they’re usually talking about entrepreneurs or people with much-needed talents or skills. Those are the people who can get visas, after all, who can afford to buy homes and start businesses that will rejuvenate the economy of a struggling city.
- But increasingly, small cities are also attracting the people who don’t have money or education, but who willingly do miserable, back-breaking jobs—cleaning houses, washing dishes, packing food. These immigrants find opportunities in their adopted cities, but also overwhelming challenges that might seem more manageable in diverse hubs such as Los Angeles or New York. --- Those metropolises and others would be unimaginable and desolate without the immigrants who hustle through them every day, on their way to jobs, school, the future.
- The immigrants of the past had labor unions, urban schools, settlement houses, and communities at large manufacturing plants to help them acclimate. Today, those institutions are in decline, the nation is divided on immigration, and education is much more essential for immigrants and their children to get ahead, according to Theo Majka, a professor at the University of Dayton who has studied the new immigrant communities there. Without anyone to advocate for immigrants, mainstream institutions “can either facilitate the incorporation of newcomers or create unnecessary obstacles and difficulties that push some toward marginal positions,”.
- Dayton has led smaller Rust Belt cities in integrating immigrants. Many of its neighbors are further behind. Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, had 21,513 Hispanic residents in 2011, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, making up 3 percent of the population. In the counties that house Ohio’s two other big cities, Cleveland and Columbus, Hispanics were 5 percent of the population in 2011. In Lucas County, where Toledo, a smaller city than Cincinnati, is located, Hispanics made up 6 percent of the population in 2011.
- Cincinnati is located on the border with Kentucky, and is the most conservative city in Ohio, an increasingly conservative state, said Alfonso Cornejo, the president of the Cincinnati Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. A host of factors make it less welcoming to immigrants than other cities, he said. The most popular local talk radio host, Bill Cunningham, frequently spews vitriol about “illegals” and immigration. The sheriff of Butler County, immediately to the north of Cincinnati, Richard K. Jones, has taken a vocal anti-immigration stance, sending an open letter to the president of Mexico asking for a reimbursement of $900,000 for “dealing with your criminals.”
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