Immigration Spurs Cities Growth

Newspapers across the country have been sifting through just released U.S. Census Data and concluding that immigration is the difference between a city's growth or demise.

Many demographers associate shrinking populations with economic problems, typically poor job markets, increasing taxes, decaying infrastructures and rising crime.

In Immigrants keep big cities' populations up (Washington Times - 4.5.07) found that small and large growing cities are doing so larger as a result of immigrants. If it wasn't for immigrants, cities as diverse as Corvallis, Oregon and New York City would have lost population and their ability to meet local labor demands.

Immigrants long have flocked to major metropolitan areas and helped them grow. But increasingly, native-born Americans are moving from those areas and leaving immigrants to provide the only source of growth.

Conversely, cities shunned by immigrants lose population as well as their ability to generate wealth.

In Lack of immigrants fuels population decline (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 4.5.07), makes the point that Pittsburgh: Cleveland, Buffalo, N.Y., Youngstown, Ohio, Scranton, Dayton, Ohio, Toledo, Ohio, Rochester, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y. have all lost population since 2000--and they're attracting relatively few immigrants. And they have aging populations and growing levels of poverty.

The irony is that its probably only through attracting hard-working and entrepreneurial immigrants that some of these cities will prevent ruin. These cities would do well to study the pro-immigration policies of cities such as Chicago and New York.