Why low-wage, low-skilled immigrants hurt small cities

April 22, 2022. Many on the left argue for open immigration to solve the problems of dying, small cities, to revive a declining population in the times of an exodus from these smaller cities and a decline in the domestic birth rate... but they're wrong. The fundamental flaw in the pursuit of demographic diversity, i.e., multiculturalism, is the inherent conflict that accompanies the interjection of "diversity" into less or not-very diverse populations.

The political meme today is that it is the responsibility of the majority population to accommodate, adjust to and accept the practices and 'culture' of the newly arrived population, while the story of progress in the United States has been built around immigrants adopting the ethos of a new country, especially its values. Immigrants can easily introduce their food and religion to their "new home" but they are not going to succeed if they impose their culture and legal system on their hosts. This is especially the case for political and economic refugees who really prefer to NOT be in their new home, whereas economic refugees who adapt to their new home's culture, economy and values are likely to find success.

Vulnerable Communities: Research, Policy, and Practice in Small Cities, edited by James J. Connolly, Dagney G. Faulk, and Emily J. Wornell (Cornell University Press, 288 pp., $31.95)

Three chapters in particular stand out for shedding light on both the problems and solutions of small cities. The first involves a small-city typology created by city planner Alan Mallach, who begins by noting that small cities cannot easily imitate the successful models of large cities, since they generally lack the critical mass necessary for agglomeration effects from talent concentrations, amenities, and other factors. Thus, their ability to develop knowledge-economy industries is limited.

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In her chapter, Ball State anthropologist Jennifer Erickson means to celebrate refugee resettlement in the Dakotas as a possible solution for declining small cities, but her article implicitly undermines its own thesis. She cites a Kaiser Family Foundation study showing that minorities, including refugees, have a poverty rate between 30 percent and 40 percent. Increasing numbers of refugees led to a significant increase in demand for social services in her profiled cities of Sioux Falls and Fargo. It took more than 10,000 immigrants to “help create or preserve” 500 manufacturing jobs (with undisclosed wage levels). As with most such economic-development claims, this result is likely exaggerated. Note that Erickson says only that the immigrants were a “help” in job creation or retention. And according to her own findings, importing refugees requires changing the culture of a city and reeducating its residents to become more “intercultural.” She cites numerous complaints about discrimination, including the now-all-too-common scenario in which even the people dedicated to fighting racial insensitivity get accused of it. Refugee resettlement appears to have introduced into these cities a permanent state of civic discord—something Erickson notes is absent from Bismarck, North Dakota, where far fewer refugees resettled.