There’s been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of deporting millions of immigrants from the United States.
Many people – including many economists — believe that would be a major economic mistake, considering many of those immigrants hold down jobs, pay taxes and have established themselves as members of their communities.
Count among them the folks at Upwardly Global and the American Immigration Council, which authored a new report calling immigrants a “key to the economic success and future viability of communities across the Great Lakes states region.
The report, “Building Community and Fueling Growth: The Role of Immigrants in Reviving the Great Lakes Region,” analyzed communities in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York. It found that immigration was key to fueling population growth, maintaining a viable workforce for critical industries like manufacturing and healthcare, and bolstering local economies.
Steven Tobocman couldn’t agree more. Tobocman, a partner in New Solutions Group, LLC and director of Global Detroit, a regional economic development initiative that seeks to grow the regional economy, has been an innovator and difference-maker in the nonprofit, political and economic fields in which he has worked.
“I think (mass deportations) would be devastating,” said Tobocman, a Staebler Fellow when he obtained his master’s degree in public policy from the Ford School at the University of Michigan. “Immigration is an economic positive. I’ve read all the research one could possibly read and, just to be as balanced as possible, there is some dispute, meaning there are different voices on this issue that in the short term, large numbers of lower skilled laborers, the impact that they have on other lower skilled labors in that regional market in the short term can be challenging.
“The integration costs any time a new population, regardless of whether they’re immigrants or not, but including whether they’re immigrants, that does bring additional language access and other issues,” he added. “I’ve found anybody who suggests that medium- and long-term communities are not better with population growth.”
The report from the American Immigration Council and Upwardly Global, which find immigration is keeping workforce viable in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York, included several key findings.
The report from the American Immigration Council and Upwardly Global, “Building Community and Fueling Growth: The Role of Immigrants in Reviving the Great Lakes Region,” analyzed communities in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York.
It found that immigration was key to fueling population growth, maintaining a viable workforce for critical industries like manufacturing and healthcare, and bolstering local economies. Specifically, the report found that:
- Immigrants to the Great Lakes States’ have fueled the region’s population growth, offsetting rural decline, and keeping the workforce viable.
- The immigrant population of the region increased by 15.9 percent between 2010 to 2022, while the U.S.-born population increased by just 0.3 percent. As a result, immigrants were responsible for 78.5 percent of the region’s population growth during that time.
- In rural areas, the immigrant population grew by 5.5 percent between 2010 and 2022, while the U.S.-born population shrank by 3.1 percent. While immigrants comprised just 2.2 percent of the rural population in 2022, without them the entire population of the rural Great Lakes region would have decreased by 3.0 percent, or 361,300 people.
- Just 61.7 percent of the U.S.-born residents in the region were of working age in 2022, a share that has continued to drop as the population ages. By contrast, 78.2 percent of the area’s foreign-born residents were of working age, making them vital to the region’s economic vitality.
- Immigrants drive job growth. Each foreign-born resident creates 1.2 additional jobs in rural counties, keeping businesses alive and stabilizing housing markets
- Immigrants hold voting power. Over 2.6M naturalized immigrants could be the margin of victory in key 2024 swing states.
- Immigrants to the Great Lakes States’ have brought talent to the region – serving critical roles in the manufacturing industry, and an outsize role in providing health care services.
- The share of foreign-born residents in the Great Lakes region with at least a bachelor’s degree rose 6.2 percentage points between 2010 and 2022, to 39.0 percent. About 19.3 percent of foreign-born residents held an advanced degree.
- Immigrants continued to work in large numbers at hard-to-fill factory jobs, occupying 42.5 percent of meat processing jobs and 30.8 percent of hand-packer jobs.
- Immigrants also comprised 16.4 percent of the STEM workforce at a time when manufacturing industries—including aircraft and pharmaceutical manufacturing—are in need of high-skill workers like physical scientists, logisticians, and software developers.
- In 2022, immigrants made up 27.8 percent of the region’s physicians, 20.6 percent of its surgeons, and nearly 17 percent of both its dentists and personal care aides, despite comprising just 7.8 percent of the population.
- Immigrants to the Great Lakes States are driving new small business creation and contributing billions of dollars to local tax revenues.
- The number of self-employed immigrants rose by 45.8 percent between 2010 and 2022, more than six times the rate of their U.S.-born counterparts. Meanwhile, the number of immigrant entrepreneurs within Main Street businesses rose by 20.7 percent, two and a half times that of the U.S.-born entrepreneurs.
- By 2022, immigrants made up 13.0 percent of the region’s self-employed and 16.4 percent of its Main Street business owners, despite comprising just 7.8 percent of the population.
According to the report, immigrant households generated $236.6 billion in income in 2022 and paid $65.7 billion in taxes, $23.9 billion of which went to state and local governments—money that helps fund schools, roads, and other public services. They held $170.9 billion in spending power—much of it circulated within the regional economy for groceries, transportation, housing, and other consumer goods.
“Immigrants aren’t just fueling our economy — they are voters, homeowners, and entrepreneurs who keep our communities running,” said Jina Krause-Vilmar, Upwardly Global President and CEO. “At Upwardly Global, we see firsthand how their contributions go beyond the numbers; they’re stabilizing neighborhoods, opening new businesses, and shaping the political future of swing states in the Great Lakes region.”
Nan Wu, director of research at the American Immigration Council, said the research “details the incredible benefits” immigrants bring to states.
“Even as dehumanizing lies spread about immigrant communities in places like Ohio, the facts are clear: immigrants make our communities more prosperous,” Wu said, referring to debunked stories surrounding migrants in the Springfield, Ohio, area that circulated during the recently completed presidential campaign.
What immigrants are doing, according to Tobocman and a host of others, is filling jobs – earning salaries and paying taxes – in a variety of employment sectors.
Jobs in fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s, home healthcare services, the construction industry and manufacturing need to be filled. The workforce needs not only highly skilled workers but entry level employees, as well.
And those are the ones, Tobocman said, who often “are demonized.”
“There’s an effort to demonize … the lower skilled labor, those who may not be as educated, but they are critical parts of our economy,” Tobocman said. “If fewer people was a pathway to economic growth then places like downtown Flint or the inner-city areas of cities like Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, would be doing gangbusters. And rural Michigan would be thriving with population loss.”
Tobocman readily admits he has not studied all of the implementation aspects of reported deportation plans, but he believes trying to depopulate the country in some kind of form is “going to be an economic loser.”
“There’s a lot of evidence that immigrants of all walks and types come to the United States for the exact same reasons today that my grandparents came here, which is both freedom and economic opportunity,” he said. “And even if they’re coming without advanced degrees, they’re coming for economic opportunity. They are more likely to be working age, they are more likely to be participating in the labor force. They are far less likely to use public services. And so the data is pretty clear that immigration is a good thing for our economy.”
According to the Upwardly Global report, between 2010 and 2022, the total population of the Great Lakes region increased by just 1.4 percent, or 914,600 people—well behind the 7.7 percent population increase experienced by the nation as a whole. Without immigrants, that growth would have been much slower.
While the U.S.-born population increased by just 0.3 percent, the immigrant population grew by 15.9 percent, or 718,000 people. As a result, despite comprising less than one-tenth of the population, immigrants in the Great Lakes region accounted for 78.5 percent of the region’s growth between 2010 and 2022. To put that in perspective, nationally immigrants accounted for 25.9 percent of population growth during that period.
Experts think such immigrant growth can work to the economic advantage of states. In fact, the Michigan Global Talent Initiative represents the first comprehensive statewide immigrant talent strategy to be integrated with the state’s overall workforce development plans.
Given Michigan’s demographic history and the deep connection between population growth and economic prosperity, MGTI says, including immigrants in the state’s workforce development policies, programs and practices is critical to the future of all Michiganders.
Rick Baker, president and CEO of the Grand Rapids, Mich., Chamber of Commerce, data “makes clear to the business community” and policy makers that immigration is a force for good and a real solution to workforce needs.
“It shows that New Americans don’t take jobs, they create them,” Baker said in a Michigan Global Matters report. “They don’t take tax dollars; they contribute tax dollars. By filling unmet talent needs of employers, immigrants also help keep jobs and companies here in our area, creating and preserving thousands of jobs that would’ve otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere.”
Toboman’s Global Detroit was launched in 2010 with the support of the Detroit Regional Chamber and New Economy Initiative to “build an immigrant-inclusive regional economy,” Tobocman said, to foster growth and prosperity.
In 2019 when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced her “Sixty by 30” workforce upskilling effort to add 700,000 college-educated or professionally certified workers to the Michigan workforce by 2030, Global Detroit reached out to them. Michigan was the 41st state to adopt a workforce development goal centered around the percentage of the workforce with degrees and credentials.
Global Detroit put its efforts into working with Office of Sixty by 30, Office of Global Michigan, the Detroit Regional Chamber, MichAuto, Grand Rapids Chamber, Small Business Association of Michigan and national experts like the National Skills Coalition, Migration Policy Institute, American Immigration Council, World Education Services and Upwardly Global.
“We created the first strategy for comprehensive immigrant inclusion to a statewide workforce upskilling initiative,” Tobocman said. “To advocate for this plan to add 100,000 to 125,000 skilled immigrant workers to the Michigan workforce by 2030, we worked to create the Michigan Global Talent Coalition, a network of more than 20 local chamber, local economic development organizations and statewide business groups.”
The coalition then advocated for $25 million to be spent over five years to focus on seven initiatives and was able to secure $5 million in funding in the fiscal 2023 state budget and another $5 million in fiscal 2024 (Learn more about the Michigan Global Talent Initiative at www.michiganglobaltalent.org).
The effort positioned Michigan as the national leader in attracting, retaining and integrating international talent in our workforce and talent. strategies. The initiative caught the attention of the White House Task Force on New Americans, which brought a visit by the task force.
Metro Detroit hosted the White House Task Force on New Americans, run by the Domestic Policy Council. It was one of a handful of local site visits to view best practices in immigrant workforce training, entrepreneurship, social integration and refugee resettlement.
The task force was created by former President Barack Obama and led to recommendations and programming across the federal government during his administration.
According to Tobocman, Global Detroit ran the entrepreneurship programming – a series of monthly webinars — for what were called “welcoming communities,” coaching some 2,000 communities.
The task force made site visits to model programs like Detroit’s and focused in immigrant integration issues rather than immigration policy.
Rather than focusing on “what should (U.S.) policy be at the southern border or what the country’s refugee policy should be, it focused on issues such as economic integration.
The work of Global Detroit caught enough of the task force’s attention that Detroit was “one of the first” few sites visited, Tobocman said. Among the visitors: Betsy Lawrence, the Domestic Policy Council’s immigration policy lead, and representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The visit was impressive enough that Global Detroit’s initiative was highlighted during panels at a conference in Washington, D.C. last fall.
“We’re very proud of the work we’ve been doing and we want to see it spread,” Tobocman said. “The reality is that, in this country, there are opportunities in retaining international students that we can all win at. I think this idea has helped spread the word. We’ve seen five states replicate what we did.”
