Immigration Has Different Impacts (I)

By: Michael Sanford

Many Americans are concerned about the social and economic impacts of immigration. Large numbers of immigrants enter the United States each year, and observers wonder how these persons affect the availability of jobs, the cost of government services, and whether their region or neighborhood is becoming overcrowded.

Immigration debates at the national level are often about whether federal policies on admissions are adequate and appropriate. But when people talk about immigration at the state and local level they often are concerned about the impact of immigration on local economies and governments. Indeed, while national studies generally find that immigrants pay more in federal taxes than they use in federally funded services, the opposite can be true at the local level, where immigrants may be net users of services because they tend to have children in relatively costly K-12 schools.

All of this raises the question of 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 a different set of states where immigration is a major factor in population growth. States with large numbers of immigrants are the so-called “gateway” states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey.

Most people strongly associate these states with immigration. States where immigration is a large portion of population growth are a different set and include a large swath of Midwestern states such as Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that are not normally considered immigration focal points. In these latter states, numbers of immigrants may be relatively small, yet they may have a significant impact due to low growth rates among the native population.

The issues associated with the arrival of large numbers of immigrants are well known: school districts may be unprepared, police and fire departments may need to learn to communicate with new populations, and bilingualism may become prominent. But the issues associated with the question of whether immigration forms a large or small portion of population growth are less discussed.

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to be continued