Rural America Needs Immigrants

Rural areas of the country are seeing declines in population and economic stagnation - Southwest Virginia is a prime example.  In addition to a shrinking population as younger residents move to cities and suburban areas for better job prospects, the populations are aging as well, leaving a shrinking work force and a shrinking tax base.  As a guest column in The Atlantic argues there is a solution that could help the situation: immigrants.  For this solution to work, of course, Republicans need to stop demonizing immigrants and many rural residents need to put aside their bigotry and closed mindedness.  As this blog has often argued, rural residents are often their own worse enemies as they cling to reactionary form of extreme Christianity and basically tell non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-right wing individuals and businesses that they are not welcomed or create a social atmosphere those they most need to revitalize their communities find repellant.  Here are column highlights:

KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Rural America has a growth problem. Business and industry desperately need workers, but the domestic labor pool is shallow, and the nation’s birthrate is slowing.

There’s no better place to help expand our economy than in rural communities like ours. We need smart public policy for sustained growth — and immigration reform would be a big part of it.

The Iowa Business Council, a group made up of representatives of the largest corporations in the state, have been asking for immigration reform for years to help solve our labor woes.

Plenty of research shows that flexible visa programs run federally or by the states could address this problem quickly.

Help-wanted signs are up all around town. There are help-wanted ads playing on our local radio station, in our local newspapers and all over the internet. Listen to your favorite national podcast here and you just might hear a targeted help-wanted ad for our ZIP code. Our county, Marion, is blessed with a strong agricultural and manufacturing base and is doing relatively well. The median household income in the county is $61,038, just a notch below the state median of $62,843. About 8 percent of us live in poverty.

Dave Swenson, an economist at Iowa State University, agrees that the reason we have so many jobs open is that we don’t have enough people to fill them.

We simply don’t have enough people in our county or in the state to fill the open positions. Raising wages might bring some of those unemployed individuals back to work, but we still won’t have enough workers.

It is a conservative county (in 2020, Donald Trump won it with 66 percent of the vote). So if you ask around town why there are so many job openings, the answer is pretty much always the same — welfare is too easy to get, especially under President Biden, and people don’t want to work. They are lazy, on the dole.

This attitude is wrong. People want to work. Rejecting unemployment aid is, as Mr. Swenson called it, “legislative pain,” with a negative economic impact for the individuals and the states.

Sure, many immigrants will flock to our urban areas, but many others come from rural, agrarian backgrounds. They are familiar with many aspects of the work in rural areas: farming, food production and manufacturing.

We also lack affordable housing here for workers. Real estate is at a premium, and real estate agents are begging for inventory to sell. Mr. Biden has earmarked $213 billion for housing in his American Jobs Plan. All new housing developments in rural America probably need to be public-private partnerships. Because of the market, most builders are drawn more strongly to the rapidly growing Des Moines metropolitan area. Why build five houses in our rural communities when you can build 50 or more in the metro?

We do have local builders who prefer to work in town, but they can’t find enough labor. One local builder is booked a year out. The labor shortage is so serious here that it is difficult not only to find someone to build a house but also to find a plumber, a roofer or a handyman.

More immigrants will also increase our tax base and help stabilize Social Security. The immigrant population is already growing here, and they are successfully contributing.

Since Republicans have so demonized immigrants during the Trump administration, Democrats need to embrace the political leadership that empowers rural communities to break out of our stagnation and fuel growth in our communities.

Virginia has ranked as the best state for business for three years in a row - in part because both Governor Northam and his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe (who is running for governor again) have pursued a welcoming to all approach.  If you want talent and workers, you cannot say "not welcomed" to those who are not white, heterosexual right wing Christians and then whine about your economic plight.