Immigrant neighbours

I recall seeing a sign in a yard in my small hometown of around 12,000 residents. “No matter where you are from,” it said, “we’re glad you are our neighbor.”

It was positioned defiantly, facing a Trump sign that had been plunged into the neighbor’s yard across the street. It poignantly illustrated the tensions in my rural Ohio town, which – like many similar communities – has experienced a rapid influx of immigrants over the last 20 years.

The sign’s sentiment was simple yet profound. I found myself wondering then, as I wonder now, when compassion had become so complicated. It seems everyone has become preoccupied arguing over the minutiae of immigration that they’ve missed the most glaring and essential point: We are neighbors.

While writing this piece, I gathered studies and prepared a detailed analysis of the ways immigrants have transformed and revitalized the economies of the Rust Belt. I was going to explain how immigrants have helped fill vacant housing and industry in this region’s shrinking cities to reverse the toll of population decline.

I gathered statistics showing the economic growth and revitalization that’s happened as immigrants have brought flourishing small businesses to their new communities. Like: Despite making up only around 14 percent of the US population, immigrants own 18 percent of small businesses with employees – and nearly a quarter of small businesses without employees. (And immigrants in Rust Belt cities are even more likely to be entrepreneurs.)

Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, a truth so widely acknowledged that it bridges the ever-growing partisan divide. Both Vice President JD Vance and former Vice President Kamala Harris have promoted the critical role of small businesses in economic flourishing.

I was going to tell a story about Joe, a vendor at my local flea market. He and other vendors were heavily averse to migrants purchasing the dilapidated building from the previous owner. Now they laud the building’s new management and improved conditions.

I was going to describe the experiences of my recently immigrated high school peers, who sometimes fell asleep in class from sheer exhaustion after working night shifts at meatpacking plants and attending school for seven hours the next day.

I was going to explain why communities not only benefit from immigrants, but need them.Without immigrants, I learned, US communities would lose the nearly $1 trillion of state, local, and federal taxes that immigrants contribute annually. This number is almost $300 billion more than immigrants receive in government benefits.

Without immigration, the US working-age population is projected to decline by approximately 6 million over the next two decades – a shift that would carry significant consequences, especially for the Social Security system. Sustained population growth is critical to preserving a balanced ratio of workers contributing to Social Security for every beneficiary receiving support.

Excerpted: ‘Immigrants Are Our Neighbors, Isn’t That Enough?’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org