This blog consistently has advocated the need for more immigrants in the U.S., especially in those states, mainly rural, with declining and aging populations.[1] Several recent articles have emphasized difficulties in pursuing such a goal.
Northern New England[2]
Northern New England has an aging, declining and overwhelmingly white population in a “huge collection of very, very small towns.” These states—New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine—therefore, need new residents, including immigrants.
A major obstacle to attracting new residents is the presence of the huge presence of whites. The reasons for this white population “stem from a variety of factors, including a lack of big urban areas, where jobs are more plentiful, [where] a wider range of housing is available and [where] cultural differences are a little more accepted than in smaller places.”
According to Peter Francese, a demographic analyst based in Exeter, N.H., “’Housing is at the core of why there aren’t more immigrants — there’s no place for them. An ethnic person who wants to come in with a family of four or five people is not going to find a home they can afford, and there’s almost no rental housing whatsoever.’ In addition, Northern New England has the nation’s highest concentration of second homes, making the housing market especially tight.”
In addition, he said, “much of any newer housing is only for people 55 or older. If developers built housing for younger people, they would likely have children, which means a need for schools, which means higher property taxes — anathema in a place like New Hampshire, which has no income tax.”
Some New Hampshire residents came up with the following ways the state could enhance its ability to draw people of different backgrounds: “a better understanding of licensing and skills that refugees bring with them so they could more easily work here; a system of rewarding businesses that hire a more diverse array of workers; a central location with a database, speakers’ bureau and training opportunities that could help companies understand what ‘diversity and inclusion’ means and how it could benefit them; and a focus on keeping workers as much as hiring them in the first place, since many leave after finding the state inhospitable.”
A possible solution to the woes of Northern New England is a new program, Welcome Home, which is sponsored by the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental organization that globally provides services to displaced people, and TripAdvisor and which has started in New York City and Northern California. This program seeks to provide refugees “an understanding of where they now live and help them integrate into their new communities.[3]
Some Whites’ Difficulties in Adjusting to Minority Status
There is a need for everyone to have understanding and empathy for some white persons who are thrust into a situation in the U.S. where they are now in the minority.
This was the theme of a sensitive article about Heaven Engle, a 20-year old white woman who does not know the Spanish language while working in a rural chicken plant where virtually all of the other workers are Latina or Latino who do not speak English. During the work-day she often feels lonely, alienated and frustrated. She also feels threatened. This takes place in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania, with a mainly white and conservative population of 1,500, isolated in Lebanon County, population 140,000, which is becoming more Hispanic.[4]
Racialized U.S. Politics[5]
This young white woman’s perspective ties in with a column about U.S. “racialized” politics by David Leonhardt, a former Washington bureau chief for the New York Times. He asserts, “American politics have become more racialized over the last decade. Over the long term, that trend will probably help the Democrats — the party of the country’s growing demographic groups. In the short term, though, it presents some real risks.” (Emphasis added.)
“Many white Americans,” he continues, “felt threatened by both . . .[Obama’s] election and the country’s increasing diversity.” Then “Trump ran the most race-obsessed campaign in decades . . . . [and] won the White House, thanks largely to a surge in white support across the upper Midwest, the Florida panhandle and elsewhere.”
Now “Trump and other top Republicans have made clear that they plan to continue their racialized strategy. They evidently think it’s their best chance to win elections. Cynical as their approach is, they may be right.” Why? “About 68 percent of the voting-age citizen population is white non-Hispanic. . . . and “these whites vote more often than nonwhites.” Moreover, “when white people are frequently reminded of their racial identity, they tend to become more politically conservative.”
===================================
[1] E.g., More Immigrants Needed in U.S., dwkcommentaries.com (June 23, 2018).
[2] Seelye, New Hampshire, 94 Percent White, Asks: How Do You Diversify a Whole State? N.Y. Times (July 27, 2018).
[3] Vora, From Trip Advisor, a Program to Help Refugees Get to Know the U.S., N.Y. Times (July 31, 2018).
[4] McCoy, White, and in the minority, Wash. Post (July 30, 2018).
[5] Leonhardt, The Politics of ‘White Threat,’ N.Y. Times (July 31, 2018); Klein, White threat in a browning America. Vox (July 30, 2018).