50 State Data Report Affirms Immigration’s Impact on Economy

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NAE PAOn August 3, Peter Gonzales, the President and CEO of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians led one of 62 events in all 50 states to talk about immigration’s impact on local economies. Peter joined the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Pennsylvania Department of State Secretary Pedro A. Cortés, and other community leaders in Philadelphia to unveil the new 50 state economic data report from our friends at the New American Economy (NAE).

“Regions that lead in the 21st Century must intentionally attract diverse people,” Peter noted, “Becoming a more welcoming place for immigrants provides our region with a competitive leg up on the competition.” Rob Wonderling, President & CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce added that “supporting immigrant population growth and accelerating immigrant integration will continue to attract and retain successful business owners and workers from around the globe to Greater Philadelphia, further strengthening our region’s diverse and vibrant economy.”

The Contributions of New Americans in Pennsylvania, as the NAE data report for Pennsylvania is named, shows that immigrants make up 6.4 percent of Pennsylvania’s population and contributed more than $7.1 billion in taxes in 2014. That same year, their total income was $25.8 billion, or 7.2 percent of all earnings in the state.

Similar data was released for all 50 states and WE Global members in Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio either hosted press conferences or took to the airwaves to discuss the new data. Global Cleveland hosted a press conference and the Michigan Office for New Americans and St. Louis Mosaic were both interviewed on local public radio. WE Global members helped NAE to spread the state reports, highlighting the tax contributions, strong labor force participation, high entrepreneurship rates, and tremendous educational attainment levels of immigrants across the Rust Belt. Moreover, immigrants have served as the foundation for population growth (or as a strong countervailing force against population decline) for most Rust Belt cities, metros, and states.

The New American Economy is a national research and advocacy group originally launched by former New York Mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg and brings together more than 500 Republican, Democratic, and Independent mayors and business leaders who support sensible immigration reforms that will help create jobs for Americans today. Nationally, the reports indicate that immigrant households earned $1.25 trillion in 2014 and paid $223.5 billion in federal taxes, $104.6 billion in state and local levies, and $123.7 billion in Social Security and $32.9 billion in Medicare payments.

August 3’s data release by NAE represents one of the most comprehensive and easy to access sources of information on a state-by-state basis. It reiterates and updates a number of compelling statistics that strongly suggest that immigrants create jobs and that they greatly enhance the economic well-being of U.S.-born residents in their local economies and neighborhoods.

WE Global members have been pioneers at integrating these facts and designing innovative local and regional polices to welcome immigrants and refugees, integrate them into local economic development strategies and programs, and build more vibrant communities. If you want to learn more about the nearly two dozen Rust Belt communities that are setting the standard for the nation’s most innovative local immigrant economic development policies, please join Peter Gonzales and the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians as they host the 2016 WE Convening on October 19-21. The Convening is an opportunity to discuss the latest trends, practices, and innovations to help Rust Belt cities and other communities develop and hone strategies to build growth economies and revitalize neighborhoods through immigrant integration.

 

 

Guest Post: Celebrating Immigrant Heritage, Building Shared Futures in Global Cities

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By Sara McElmurry, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Chicago’s ambitions to be “the most immigrant-friendly city in the world” made it a suitable setting for rich conversations about cultural heritage and inclusion at the Chicago Forum on Global Cities on June 1-3, timed perfectly with the kickoff of Immigrant Heritage Month, a nationwide celebration of our shared heritage of diverse cultures.

Forum panelist Ronnie Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Hang Lung Group, eloquently framed the theme at one of the Forum’s opening plenaries, reflecting on how the soul of a city is shaped by the generations of diverse people who have migrated through it.

That’s certainly the case for Chicago, whose unique character comes complements of those who came here from somewhere else. Much of Chicago’s mosaic of neighborhoods—Chinatown, Greektown, Little Italy, and Ukrainian Village—still bears the names of its original ethnic inhabitants. The city’s iconic foods have immigrant roots: deep dish pizza evolved out of the culinary traditions of Neapolitan immigrants, Chicago-style hot dogs from German-born residents. Chicago is home to a slew of cultural institutions—from the National Hellenic Museum to the Polish Museum of America to the National Museum of Mexican Art—that speak to the importance of the city’s immigrant heritage on countrywide level.

If cities’ souls are shaped by their past generations of immigrants, it is important to recognize that their futures—their economy and their demography—will be formed by their ability to embrace forthcoming waves of newcomers.

Critical conversations about immigrant integration and inclusion are too often challenged by today’s hyper-polarized climate of a worldwide refugee crisis, global security concerns around terrorism, and intense anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States, Europe and beyond. But global cities—ports of entry for immigrants across the world, often more nimble and pioneering in creating integration programs and policies that their federal governments—are well-suited to be the world’s laboratories in developing and sharing best practices in this area:

  • In the Gulf States, cities are championing the building of cultural institutions as “connectivity hubs” in uniting people in countries where more than 90 percent of the population is foreign-born. Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, an Abu Dabi-based journalist, spoke about how the city’s art museums provide a means for people from diverse cultures to converge. Experiencing each other’s art “detoxifies tensions and reinforces a shared sense of humanity,” he said.
  • In Germany, where the federal government is struggling to serve 1.5 million refugees, the city of Hamburg has successfully mobilized a network of local volunteers to welcome the more than 61,000 refugees who entered the city last year alone. “It’s not just the state who is responsible for the care and education [of refugees],” said Dorothee Stapelfeldt, Minister for Urban Development and Housing in Hamburg. “There are many volunteers who are going to refugees, talking to them, inviting them to coffee, tea, cakes, and playing with the children. You need a society to care about refugees.”
  • In Chile, metro-level investments in infrastructure are addressing the economic inequality that plagues the country, which disenfranchises newcomers and native Chileans alike. “My job is to convince the ‘haves’ that the problems of the ‘have-nots’ are their problems,” said Claudio Orrego, governor of the metropolitan region of Santiago. Governor Orrego has championed innovative investments in infrastructure—Santiago’s best library is in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, for example—to create a shared sense of ownership in the city’s future.

While global cities have relatively deep pockets and large platforms to carry out their efforts, some of the most innovative work in immigrant integration is being done in smaller communities across the cash-strapped Midwest where aging populations and stagnating economies stand to benefit greatly from an influx of youthful, working-age immigrants.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs studied the incredible momentum of these regional initiatives in its 2014 “Reimaging the Midwest” paper, which highlighted the efforts of places like Detroit, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati in establishing immigrant welcoming efforts out of their mayor’s offices, and smaller communities like Grand Island, Nebraska—population 50,000—which offers citizenship classes, health fairs, translation services, and cultural awareness events to immigrants and native-born residents alike. Chicago, for its part, offers citizenship services in libraries, provides supports for undocumented students in public schools, and provides resources to immigrant entrepreneurs.

Big or small, cities are filling the gaps created by stalled action on immigration at the federal level in the United States.

Edward Glaeser, a faculty member at Harvard University, spoke about how “cities are good for immigrants and immigrants are good for cities” in a Forum plenary around building economic equality and vibrancy in the world’s global cities. Indeed, even as immigrants often come to cities in search of opportunity, their presence represents a demographic, economic and cultural lifeline in communities across the globe, both large and small.

As global cities celebrate the unique immigrant heritage that has shaped their “souls” this month, they’d be well-served also to do some soul searching on how they can best embrace newcomers and maximize their contributions. Against a growing global rhetoric around building walls and sealing national borders, global cities can—and should—lead a constructive conversation on extending welcomes and creating strong shared futures.

This post originally appeared on The Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Global Insight.

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New Gateway Cities: Immigration key to rebuilding Rust Belt communities

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New Governing Magazine article highlights that immigration is a critical source of population growth and economic vitality for Midwest and Rust Belt cities and metros, and shows the importance of Welcoming Economies Global Network efforts in three member cities.

By Steve Tobocman

An article in this month’s Governing Magazine, the nation’s leading media platform covering politics, policy and management for state and local government leaders, highlights the work of several Welcoming Economies Global Network (WE Global) members and the importance of our work in rebuilding the Midwest and Rust Belt, as well as the importance of our region in the nation’s immigration story. Three WE Global members are featured and quoted (from Columbus, Dayton, and Detroit) and Welcoming America’s Deputy Director Rachel Peric is quoted at length.

Titled “Immigrants Establishing Roots in New Gateway Cities,” the article focuses on whether Census data can be used to evaluate initiatives in the Midwest and Rust Belt that have launched in recent years to attract immigrants to boost their economies.

“The Midwest is becoming the new gateway,” says Guadalupe Velasquez, WE Global Steering Committee member and coordinator of the New American Initiative for the City of Columbus.

Governing compared Census data collected for all U.S. cities with populations of at least 100,000. According to the article, Midwest and Rust Belt cities are experiencing a disproportionate share of immigration growth. With immigrant populations lower than the national average (and/or lower than populations in Sun Belt cities or traditional gateways), cities in the WE Global Network tend to possess some of the most rapidly growing immigrant populations.

“Cities where the foreign born make up less than a tenth of the total population recorded an average foreign-born population increase of 18 percent over the five-year period [2009-2014], compared to 7 percent in areas where they make up more than a quarter of the population,” the article states. “The 106 jurisdictions where the foreign-born accounted for less than a tenth of the total population collectively added twice as many foreign-born residents as natives.”

Many WE Global members are beginning to turn their attention to evaluating the impacts of their efforts. Impact evaluation has been a priority area for WE Global Network technical assistance and insight—the Network hosted two separate sessions on the topic during the core member day of our first three annual convenings.

Trying to use annual Census numbers to evaluate programmatic impacts in WE Global cities can be a difficult task. During the 2015 WE Global Convening in Dayton, core members heard from David Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Institute about some of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on annual Census data to try to measure interventions that WE Global members have launched in the last few years. The problem is that available data sources just don’t capture year-by-year changes in population accurately enough.

Nonetheless, the underlying trends suggested by the Governing Magazine article highlight the importance of the WE Global Network and its members—immigration is a critical source of population growth and economic vitality for Midwest and Rust Belt cities and metros.

Columbus

The article notes that Columbus was one of the nation’s earliest adopters of immigrant-friendly outreach. Officials first took up the issue in the mid-1990s, and efforts have since shifted more to capacity building and support for various organizations that serve immigrants.

According to Governing Magazine, Columbus experienced an estimated 27 percent jump in the foreign-born population between 2009 and 2014, compared to an average increase of 9 percent for cities with over a half-million residents, and about 11 percent of Columbus residents are now foreign born. Noting that this growth and immigrant population size is more than other larger cities in the WE Global region, the article again cites Guadalupe Velasquez, WE Global Steering Committee Member and Columbus New Americans Initiative Coordinator, as attributing Columbus’s early work on immigrant attraction, retention, and welcoming—along with the ample supply of jobs, affordable housing, and higher education opportunities—as factors in Columbus’ success.

Dayton

The article states that some “cities farthest along with their immigrant-friendly initiatives — particularly Dayton — experienced some of the steepest recent gains.” It quotes WE Global Steering Committee member and Welcome Dayton Program Coordinator Melissa Bertolo, who notes thatWelcome Dayton’s goal “is focused more on making Dayton a place that works for existing immigrants, rather than to attract more newcomers. But this has had the effect of establishing new immigrant communities as well.”

The article notes that between 2009 and 2014, Dayton’s foreign-born population jumped 62 percent—a larger increasethan in any other city Governing Magazine reviewed that lost native residents during the same period. Dayton’s immigrant population gains were also the fifth largest gain in any locality of 100,000 or more residents.

Detroit

The Census numbers in Detroit are less clear. The City of Detroit has continued to suffer significant population losses in both U.S.-born and foreign-born during the 2009-2014 period, but suburban communities have experienced significant growth in the foreign-born population. The article references the support of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and quotes WE Global Network Steering Committee Co-Chair and Global Detroit Executive Director Steve Tobocman about the importance of this kind of support. “It’s most powerful when it’s not just immigrant groups welcoming immigrants,” Tobocman notes, “but when it comes from the mainstream political leadership, economic development departments and chambers of commerce.”

The article also references the international student retention and high-skilled immigrant integration initiatives that have been launched in the region and some early signs of success.

 

The Welcoming Economies Global Network is a project of Welcoming America in partnership with Global Detroit. For more media coverage, click here. To learn how your community can join the network, click here.