St. Louis listed in story about why foreign born are seeking Midwest
Highly skilled migrants aren’t just heading to California and New York — they’re going to flyover country.
For decades, Midwestern businesses have relied on cheap, unskilled immigrant labor to power industry and agriculture. The trend of highly qualified foreign-born professionals — people who contribute handsomely to the local spending and tax dollars coveted by postindustrial towns and cities — moving to the region is far more recent. According to the Migration Policy Institute:
BETWEEN 2000 AND 2017, THE FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION OF OHIO, INDIANA, IOWA, ILLINOIS AND WISCONSIN GREW AN AVERAGE OF 45 PERCENT, COMPARED TO LESS THAN 4% IN THE AMERICAN-BORN POPULATION.
In terms of population increase, America’s foreign-born population is around 15 percent — the highest in more than a century — more than the United Kingdom’s nearly 13 percent but far behind Canada (21 percent) and Australia (28 percent). While the foreign-born population in the U.S. increased 43 percent between 2000 and 2017, the American-born population grew just 12 percent. Michigan’s immigrant population increased by 34 percent in that time, while its American-born population fell by nearly 2 percent. Indiana’s and Nebraska’s foreign-born populations rocketed 88 and 92 percent, respectively, while the American-born share grew by just 7 and 9 percent. The states with the biggest percentage growth gap: North Dakota (156 percent foreign-born vs. 15 percent American-born) and South Dakota (118 percent foreign vs. 13 percent American).
Several states outside the Midwest have far higher foreign-born populations: Almost 27 percent of California’s population was born outside the country, 21 percent in Florida, 17 percent in Texas and 23 percent in New York. But those states have long-standing immigrant cultures and histories, as opposed to the Midwest, where the recent boom is itself a calculated strategy.
“[The] trend of attracting immigrants has been in place since about 2010,” says Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. That year, a city-sanctioned program called Global Detroit sought to exploit the professional and creative value immigrants offer Motor City, in the midst of its own turmoil, and helped them connect with employers and startups across southern Michigan. Soon, there was a Global Cleveland and a Global Pittsburgh, and the likes of Dayton, St. Louis and Indianapolis have followed suit with their own immigrant-facilitating projects.