Latinos Saved Dying US Cities

Here’s another way to look at the incredible growth of the Latino community over the past ten years: if not for Latinos 50 of the nation’s largest cities would have shrunk.

A part of the Census story that is rarely mentioned, mostly because the spotlight has been on Latinos, is that the non-Hispanic white population is in decline. They’re getting older, dying off and reproducing less. According to the Washington Post:

Hispanics accounted for the population growth of Philadelphia, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Omaha and Atlanta. Asians boosted the count in Anaheim, Calif.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Baton Rouge; and Jersey City. Without influx from the two groups, all of those cities would have shrunk.

Six of the ten largest cities in the United states are now minority-majority.

The population bellwether over the past ten years has been closely related to the number of Latinos and Asians in a given community. Cities that attracted Latinos fared better than those that didn’t. And looking to the future, the cities that thrive will be the one’s that open their doors to change.

“The real energy in cities is going to be from Hispanics coming in,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “Cities in the industrial Midwest could use an infusion of new immigrant minorities coming in. Cleveland and Detroit haven’t done well; they’re not attracting enough Hispanics. Clearly, Hispanics were the magic bullet for a lot of cities.”

I find it interesting that in the midst of a severe economic recession, when many people gave up on their cities and began to move out, Latinos were coming in to bolster the workforce.

The other side of this finding is that the Latinos that bolstered the life of dying cities did so by filling needed and vacant jobs and paying taxes. The idea that immigrants don’t pay taxes is absurd. Immigrants pay sales taxes and if they rent their home the cost of property tax is passed to them by the owners. The presence of Latinos is good economic news for a city.

Imagine Philadelphia, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Omaha and Atlanta without Latinos. The implication is that they would have slowly disappeared.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda