Census: Immigrants stabilize big-city populations

[RedEarth]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Without immigrants pouring into the nation's big metro areas, places such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston would be losing population.

Many smaller areas, including Battle Creek, Michigan, Ames, Iowa, and Corvallis, Oregon, would lose people as well, according to population estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

"Immigrants are filling the void as domestic migrants are seeking opportunities in other places," said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a private research organization.

The New York metro area, which includes suburbs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, added 1 million immigrants from 2000 to 2006. Without those immigrants, the region would have lost nearly 600,000 people.

Without immigration, the Los Angeles, California, metro area would have lost more than 200,000, the San Francisco, California, area would have lost 188,000 and the Boston, Massachusetts, area would have lost 101,000.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/05/metro.population.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories