Anti-Immigrant Policies Are Harming Red States

Donald Trump and his racist acolytes in the Republican Party have ramped up anti-immigrant bigotry and imposed restrictions on legal immigration which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants rescinded and/or revised.  The ultimate irony is that these restrictions on legal immigrants are harming growing areas of red states which need immigrants to grow eceonomically given their otherwise declining populations and difficulty in enticing educated workers from other parts of the country to move to what they view as a social backwater. Candidly, it is another instance of GOP policiues ultimately harming their own base.  A piece in the New York Times looks at one case in point: Northwest Arkansas.  Here are article excepts:

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Northwest Arkansas, where the Ozark Mountains rise, used to be a sleepy corner of the state, its only claim to fame that Sam Walton opened a five-and-dime in Bentonville and the first Walmart store in nearby Rogers — outposts that became the seeds of a global retail empire. The founders of Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt got their start in the same region, and a network of software companies moved in later to meet big business’s insatiable appetite for new technology.

But there were not enough locals to build the burgeoning economy. Answering the call to work in poultry production, trucking, construction and computer programming were legions of immigrants from El Salvador, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, India and elsewhere.

With tens of thousands of immigrants helping to catalyze its development, Northwest Arkansas has emerged as one of the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Brimming with optimism, it is wooing newcomers with cheaper housing, a world-class art museum, upscale restaurants and forested bike trails.

But as much of the U.S. economy comes back from the coronavirus pandemic, the decades-long influx of immigrants that fueled such enormous expansion in places like Arkansas has begun to stall, posing challenges to the region and the country at large.

The United States over the past 10 years experienced the slowest population growth rate in eight decades, according to the 2020 census, because of plunging fertility rates and shrinking immigration. . . . And the flow of legal immigrants, whom Northwest Arkansas companies also heavily rely on, has fallen precipitously since the Trump administration clamped down on all kinds of immigration with the belief that it was displacing American workers.

Now, business leaders are hoping that President Biden will make good on his pledge to overhaul the immigration system and establish a legal pipeline for foreign workers to take jobs in Northwest Arkansas and other places that depend on them.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on Congress and the White House to double the number of visas for high-skilled temporary workers under the H-1B program and also for seasonal workers in sectors like agriculture and meat production, another economic mainstay in this part of the country.

“In addition to securing the border, we should be focusing on how to secure avenues for more legal immigration,” said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “For a whole host of communities all across the United States, immigration will determine whether the local economy will continue to grow for those moving there and the residents who have called that place home for decades.”

The decline in immigration is an important factor in the long-term decline in population growth that demographers are forecasting in the United States.

Areas such as Northwest Arkansas can “forget about” continued growth, Mr. Chamie said, without the steady arrival of new immigrants. . . . . In Northwest Arkansas, 1,750 foreign newcomers arrived in 2016, accounting for more than 14 percent of all new residents, according to the census. In 2019, only 750 new immigrants settled in the area.

The drop comes as employers in the region — like many across the country — are also facing an intense labor shortage from the pandemic. Home builders, hospitals and technology companies are all struggling to find workers. Poultry processors have been offering higher hourly rates as well as attendance, referral and sign-on bonuses.

Jared Smith, the chief executive of Kitestring, a boutique technology company that serves retailers, has been trying for months to fill 30 jobs. . . . About 35 percent of his 175 employees are on H-1B visas. “If I were to depend exclusively on U.S. citizens, it’s hard to imagine I would grow,” he said.

Immigrants have transformed the area not just culturally, but politically as well.

As of the 1990 census, Northwest Arkansas was 95 percent white. But by 2019, that figure had dropped to 72 percent, thanks to immigration. In Bentonville, 15.5 percent of the population was foreign born by then, and in Springdale, the state’s poultry center, 37.6 percent of the population was Hispanic.

Even in the state’s Republican-majority legislature, there has been recognition of the role of immigrant labor. This year the General Assembly passed a bill to enable undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, often known as “Dreamers,” to obtain any professional or occupational license, one of the most liberal such laws in the country.

“We have a fast-growing economy, and we are concerned about a labor shortage,” said Nelson Peacock, who heads the Northwest Arkansas Council, founded by major employers in the region to promote economic development. “We need workers of all skill levels, and immigrants are an important part of the equation.”

“The makeup of Northwest Arkansas has changed dramatically thanks to immigrants, and we are much better off because of them,” said Mr. Flores, 33, who arrived in the United States when he was 3 years old. “To keep flourishing, the region will need immigrants to continue moving here.”