Immigration Has Different Impacts
By Michael Sanford, Thu Dec 8th

Many Americans are concerned about the social and economicimpacts of immigration. Large numbers of immigrants enter theUnited States each year, and observers wonder how these personsaffect the availability of jobs, the cost of governmentservices, and whether their region or neighborhood is becomingovercrowded. debates at the national level are oftenabout whether federal policies on admissions are adequate andappropriate. But when people talk about at the stateand local level they often are concerned about the impact ofimmigration on local economies and governments. Indeed, whilenational studies generally find that immigrants pay more infederal taxes than they use in federally funded services, theopposite can be true at the local level, where immigrants may benet users of services because they tend to have children inrelatively costly K-12 schools. All of this raises the questionof 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 adifferent set of states where is a major factor inpopulation growth. States with large numbers of immigrants arethe so-called "gateway" states: California, New York, Texas,Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey. Most people stronglyassociate these states with immigration. States whereimmigration is a large portion of population growth are adifferent set and include a large swath of Midwestern statessuch as Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that are notnormally considered focal points. In these latterstates, numbers of immigrants may be relatively small, yet theymay have a significant impact due to low growth rates among thenative population. The issues associated with the arrival oflarge numbers of immigrants are

well known: school districts maybe unprepared, police and fire departments may need to learn tocommunicate with new populations, and bilingualism may becomeprominent. But the issues associated with the question ofwhether forms a large or small portion of populationgrowth are less discussed. Consider the economic role played byimmigrants as workers. In the factories of Chicago, which islosing native population, immigrants are more than one out offour workers, and without their presence those factories mightneed to move elsewhere to find needed workers. In Atlanta,Georgia, a city to which natives are streaming from places likeNew York and Philadelphia, the number of service sector jobs hasmushroomed in recent years, and immigrants are an important partof the labor force that undergirds that expansion. In addition,states with low native population growth but rapid immigrantgrowth may expect greater cultural and linguistic changes thanstates where these social changes are diluted because so manynatives are moving in. Immigrants moving into a region may ormay not cause native-born Americans to leave the area. In theend the question can be of the chicken-or-the-egg type: arenatives leaving an area because it is undesirable, whileimmigrants are moving in because they have differentexpectations? Or do immigrants "push" out the natives, who fleein the face of competition from the newcomers? Researchersdebate whether this kind of push-and-pull mechanism explains whynatives have been leaving many metropolitan areas where there isimmigrant growth.

Immigration has different impacts in different states. Usually,however, this has been interpreted to mean that places with highimmigrant numbers are heavily impacted by immigration, whileareas with low numbers are not. However, immigrant numbersshould be taken in the context of native population growth tobetter understand the impact of immigration. A state may havehigh immigration, but if it has high native population growth,some impacts of are diminished. This fact may notchange the attitudes and opinions of persons unhappy aboutimmigration in booming areas of the south and west like NorthCarolina, Georgia, and Nevada. But the truth is that theirimmigrant numbers do not translate into the same level of impactas similar numbers in Michigan, Kansas, or New Jersey. In theselatter states, the foreign born are proving to be more valuablethan ever.

For more information on please visit the Immigration Resource Center