Immigrants prop up US cities as locals move out

[babylonsister]

Whatever will Dobbs, O'Lielly, et al., do with this info?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2051358,00.html

Immigrants prop up US cities as locals move out


Census bureau figures show new arrivals plugging gaps amid drift to the south

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday April 6, 2007
The Guardian

Immigration is helping to keep America's big cities vibrant and alive, buffering major metropolitan areas from a slow drain in population as longtime residents move out, new data released yesterday by the US Census Bureau shows.

The trend also holds true for smaller centres, with new arrivals compensating for a shift in population away from the cities and towns of the midwest and northeast towards the south.

"New York would certainly be declining in population, same with Los Angeles, and so they really are kind of propping up the population in a lot of big cities," said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. "In some places, like in the rust belt around Pittsburgh, where they are having real substantial population loss, immigrants are playing a vital role. They are coming in and filling needed jobs, and providing some of the tax base that is needed to help the economy."

The area still lost 60,000 of its population between 2000 and last year, according to census data, but without immigration the decline would have been far worse.

By the middle of this century those patterns of movement - native-born Americans moving out, newcomers and their families moving in - will put a very different face on the average city. The majority population will be members of ethnic minority groups. In some of the fastest growing cities, such as the Dallas Fort Worth area, immigrants accounted for nearly 80% of population growth over the last six years.

Such transformations come at a time when immigration has emerged as the most emotionally charged topic of public debate in the United States after the Iraq war.

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[Selatius]

1. With Dobbs, if it's legal immigrants, he has nothing to complain about.

With illegal immigrants, Dobbs has something to complain about, namely that they're the wrong skin color and that they're being used as depressing force on wages of US citizens. The more illegal immigrants there are in a sector of the economy, the lower the wages and the fewer the benefits there will be for everybody else.

[LeftHander]

2. K&R

[KG]

3. if both political parties hadn't spent the last 30 years helping their corporate masters

ship jobs and industries out of the US, there'd be plenty of work for everybody.