nwasianweekly.com
April 14, 2007

Immigrants keep cities buzzing


Can you imagine America without New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Boston?

Hard to believe, but those bustling metropolitan areas have been in danger of shrinking. What’s kept them alive the past several years? Immigrants.

According to census estimates released last week, immigrants are filling the void left by native-born Americans who are moving away from the big metro areas in droves.

If not for the addition of 1 million immigrants between 2000 and 2006, the New York area would have lost nearly 600,000 people. Without immigration, the Los Angeles area would have been depleted of more than 200,000, the San Francisco area would have lost 188,000 and the Boston area would have been without 101,000, according to census figures reported last week by The Associated Press.

Immigrants allow these cities to not only stay on the map, but to also have growing economies, low unemployment rates and, most importantly, promising futures.

It’s not easy being an immigrant in America these days. The government has dramatically raised the costs of becoming a naturalized citizen and it’s getting tougher to bring relatives to the U.S. Given all this negative talk about illegal immigrants, we wanted to spotlight some of the benefits of immigration.

For one, immigrants contribute by providing much-needed labor. They are willing to take the backbreaking, low-wage jobs that native-born Americans don’t want or are too skilled to take.

It’s a fact that many immigrants come to America with an entrepreneurial spirit. Many mom-and-pop shops are owned by immigrants. Just look at the plethora of family-owned shops and restaurants along Seattle’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way South. Small businesses like these are the backbone of the American economy. They’re vital to the success of America, and immigrants should be thanked for their role in keeping the U.S. economy afloat.

On the flip side, take a look at Japan, which has few immigrants, a rapidly aging population and declining birth rates. A United Nations report estimates that Japan’s population could decrease by 22 million by 2050. That has enormous implications for the future of Japan. As the baby-boomers start to retire, who will be there to replace them?

The reality is, U.S. prosperity depends on immigration. In the Seattle metropolitan area, for example, some housing experts believe that the number of homeowners will rise for years to come, largely due to the number of immigrants in this area. That’s a good thing for this region, as rising homeownership rates are a sign of a growing economy.

Some people have a knee-jerk reaction to immigration: Seal all the borders and don’t let anyone in. But that’s an uninformed view, as it doesn’t acknowledge the important — no, essential — role that immigrants have in the economy of the U.S.

America needs immigrants.

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