In another time and place, the Trump-Vance campaign’s decision to go all in on the unfounded claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and eating pets might be kind of funny. But given where we are as a nation, it’s no joke. The city has been forced to close schools and public buildings in the face of recent bomb threats.
Given this reality, it seems almost in bad taste to talk about the economic consequences of this kind of rhetoric. But those consequences are real, and overwhelmingly negative — especially for municipalities like Springfield that have managed to reverse population decline and bolster job growth by embracing immigration. Here, we can see how hate could destroy the chances of economic renewal in parts of the heartland.
I’ve written before about the problem of regions left behind by the 21st-century economy, a problem that is common to many wealthy nations. Decline in parts of the former East Germany has fed right-wing extremism in ways that resemble the rise of Trumpism in some depressed parts of our country.
There are, however, some small cities that have managed to buck the trend; and in quite a few cases immigrants have been central to their revival. Springfield, with its community of (legal!) Haitian migrants is one example. Other examples include my hometown, Utica, N.Y., buoyed by refugees from Bosnia and Myanmar; Springdale, Ark., which has attracted people from various places including the Marshall Islands; and many others.
These local immigration hot spots tend to involve particular ethnicities for the same reason many Norwegian immigrants once settled in Minnesota and many Eastern European Jews headed for New York’s Lower East Side: A few pioneers send word to people they know, and eventually communities emerge with the critical mass to help sustain some of their cultural traditions.
Why do immigrants move to some small cities? Partly in response to housing costs that were, at least until recently, relatively low (as they tend to be in declining cities). In some instances, they also move to take advantage of jobs that some native-born Americans, for whatever reasons, are reluctant to do. In Springdale, the home of Tyson Foods, these are often jobs in poultry plants. In Springfield, which, The Times reported, has seen “a boom in manufacturing and warehouse jobs,” employers suggest that some young native-born adults shun “entry-level, rote work.”
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