Early items are very promising. In 2023, the area added 30,000 residents born abroad, 23.2 %, an increase in the population of immigrants, according to census data. (The New York region added 88,000, only 1.5 % increase.) This was almost enough to offset the loss of 34,000 people born.
“We have no choice but to grow and the way we will do this is through immigration to St. Louis,” said Dustin Allison, the Temporary Managing Director of Greater St. Louis Inc., of the main business team of the city. “I’m really cold about it. I need bodies because I need talent to attract and keep the companies here. ”
“You see shortcomings in almost every workforce, from police to teachers to the construction,” said Brad Christ, a Republican state spokesman from a suburban area southwest of the city. “That’s why I’m a very legal immigration, and there are very good ways to do it effectively and I think we have done it effectively at St. Louis.”
The approach has worked for other metropolitan areas that are losing the population, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, which began at the same time as St. Louis. As birth declines, migration is projected to be the only source of nation’s population growth, and cities with rapidly aging demographics are struggling for their influx.
“Since these places lose domestic immigrants, they are going to depend very much on immigration to increase their population than in the past,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Foundation he has written about the recent increase in arrivals. Domestic immigrants are those who come from other parts of the country – or leave, as appropriate.
Now, Trump’s administration is upgrading this strategy-leaving the funding of refugee resettlement, recalling the provisional legal status of other recent immigrants and possibly contracting employment-based visas. Missouri’s Republican ruler, Mike Kehoe, marked that those who should not worry those who should not worry, directing the law enforcement to pursue illegal immigrants and collect the regime of immigration.
For elected officials in St. Louis (all of them in the city itself, they are Democrats), the dislike for immigrants to the state and the national level creates a harsh head in measures that would make this blue city in a red state that welcomes young residents. Politicians from the county, which surrounds but does not include the city, are on the same page.
“We want people who can come here and work and bring their skills,” said Sam Page, St. Louis County and also Democrat. “The President’s policies create an undesirable environment.”
