Immigrants as in-migration and city-town revitalization

It's no secret that immigrant in-migration can be a great source of energy for community revitalization.  One example is Somalis in Minneapolis-St. Paul ("Somalis finding their place in Minnesota," CNN, 2017).  

Another, Cape Verdeans in Boston ("Uphams Corner, Boston: revitalization "without" gentrification," 2023).  In fact a recent No Passport Required with Marcus Samuelsson episode on PBS featured the Portuguese disaspora in Boston--people from different countries but connected by language. And great food.

Members of the Denison High School mariachi ensemble pose for a group photo prior to the start of the 2022 Fiesta Mariachi celebration.  Photo: Brian Houlgrave, Des Moines Register.

Denison, Iowa.  Only because it was in my newsfeed I came across a brilliant piece about Denison, Iowa in the Des Moines Register.  Written by Courtney Crowder who is assigned to do feature articles around the entire state.  She's great.

-- "A beloved rural Iowa diner closes. A family of Mexican immigrants reopens it--with a twist"

The article is about how the town attracts Hispanics working in two area meatpacking plants.  How the legacy white community and the new Hispanic community were not connected, but the legacy leadership realized, in the face of rural shrinkage that wouldn't work, and how the two communities are albeit probably too slowly, intertwining.  

Denison is growing in population, when most rural communities are not.

DMR photo.

The article centers around an old restaurant that was the hub of the community but closed during the pandemic, and how it is being revived by a small scale Latino entrepreneur in a fusion style way--meatloaf, American breakfast and unlimited coffee, complemented by new Latino dishes.

She first wrote about the town's fusion work in how the high school music teacher and band leader added a mariachi band to get more students involved in music ("This Iowa meatpacking town didn't always welcome immigrants. Then the high school started a mariachi band," DMR).

WSJ photo.

Topeka. The Wall Street Journal reports that Topeka is looking at immigrants as a valuable resource for economic revitalization in terms of a source of workers, entrepreneurialism, and neighborhood revitalization, "The American City With a Message for Migrants: We Want You."

Financial Times.  Simon Kuper has a column on this phenomenon, "The surprising success of multi-ethnic cities."  From the article:

London, New York and Paris deserve more credit for how well they are holding together. Every day in these multi-ethnic cities, people of Muslim, Christian and Jewish origin share streets, buses and classrooms.

The article doesn't say a lot, mostly contrasting Western cities to places of conflict.  But cities have always been the place for exchange, and the development of "cosmopolitanism" -- an openness to new ideas and innovation (see Jane Jacobs' The Economy of Cities), and the bringing together of people from different places.

Elijah Anderson wrote some time ago The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, about this phenomenon, focused on daily life in Center City Philadelphia.

Anderson walks us through Center City Philadelphia, revealing and illustrating through his ethnographic fieldwork how city dwellers often interact across racial, ethnic, and social borders. People engage in a distinctive folk ethnography. Canopies operating in close proximity create a synergy that becomes a cosmopolitan zone. In the vibrant atmosphere of these public spaces, civility is the order of the day. However, incidents can arise that threaten and rend the canopy, including scenes of tension involving borders of race, class, sexual preference, and gender. But when they do—assisted by gloss—the resilience of the canopy most often prevails. In this space all kinds of city dwellers—from gentrifiers to the homeless, cabdrivers to doormen—manage to co-exist in the urban environment, gaining local knowledge as they do, which then helps reinforce and spread tolerance through contact and mutual understanding.

-- "Bridging Racial Divides In 'Cosmopolitan Canopies'," NPR interview of Elijah Anderson 

Photo: Migrants gather Monday near the US-Mexico border wall after crossing a razor wire fence as members of the Texas National Guard stand guard, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters ("‘This is not over,’ Texas says after Supreme Court lets Biden administration remove razor wire at US-Mexico border," CNN).

Immigration and the US Southern Border.  I have a blog post, with lots of appended comments, about how the US should deal with the border with Mexico and in the Caribbean, "A solution to the immigration crisis on the Southern border, but it's too politically fraught," based on a chapter of the book End of Policing.  Professor Alex Vitale suggests that rather than criminalizing immigration, the US should adopt polices more like the EU's Schengen Zone.  

Granted the Zone is only for free cross-border movement for citizens of EU countries, but it is a model for how the US could develop an Americas Zone, with registration, allowing people to move back and forth without necessarily having to live in the US permanently nor get a green card to be able to work.  

The Alliance for Progress was a 10-year plan proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to foster economic cooperation between North and South America, particularly aimed at countering the perceived communist threat from Cuba. The program was signed at an inter-American conference in Uruguay in August 1961.

The reality is that desperate circumstances in Central and South America will always make the US a desired destination.  

Building a wall or saying "we're full" ("America is 'full,' Lindsey Graham says," ) doesn't reflect reality.

Vitale also suggests implementing an EU like INTERREG program.  INTERREG invests in less well off EU countries to provide residents with more reasons to stay rather than to emigrate West.

The US has dissipated a lot of its soft power with South America, providing opportunities for other countries ("China's Growing Influence in Latin America," Council on Foreign Relations).  And it has a fraught relationship anyway.  Lots of past military intervention or support of it never helps.

This would change it up considerably.

-- VARIATIONS OF U.S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN CENTRAL AMERICA’S NORTHERN TRIANGLE, thesis, US Navy Postgraduate School

One of the ideas I had is an "Americas Expo" which could be like the World Expo and EU Capital of Culture program mixed into one, moving around to the various countries.

San Antonio Texas attributes a lot of its repositioning to having held HemisFair 1968 ("In 1968, San Antonio's World's Fair Changed The City Forever," Texas Standard, "HemisFair '68 transformed the city," San Antonio Express-News, "After the Fair's Over: The “Redemption Story” of HemisFair Park," San Antonio Current).

Building ties rather than rejecting them is the way to go.