{"id":83285,"date":"2026-08-18T22:47:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T05:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=83285"},"modified":"2026-08-18T22:47:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T05:47:43","slug":"they-age-and-shrink-and-die-immigration-crackdowns-threaten-growth-in-rural-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=83285","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They Age and Shrink and Die\u2019 \u2014 Immigration Crackdowns Threaten Growth in Rural America"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In rural and small-town America, communities that leaned on immigrants to revive their workforce and economies after decades of population loss are watching that lifeline disappear.<\/p>\n

For the first time in at least half a century, immigration to the United States turned\u00a0net negative<\/a>\u00a0in 2025. The country is on track to continue that trend this year amid continued deportations, forcing shrinking U.S. communities to confront the looming possibility that the same individuals who helped stabilize them could disappear.<\/p>\n

A population lifeline<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Tim Slack, professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University, discusses population loss in rural American and how immigration is keeping small towns alive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Immigration has functioned as \u201ca population lifeline\u201d for rural America, offsetting economic and demographic losses caused by aging populations and young adults leaving for education and jobs, said Tim Slack, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University, at an\u00a0Aug. 14 American Community Media briefing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From 2010 to 2020, the total population of U.S. rural counties fell by about half a percentage point \u2014\u00a0an unprecedented decadal decline<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with roughly two-thirds of rural counties losing population and one-third gaining.<\/p>\n

Of the rural counties that grew, many did so only because immigrant population growth offset a decline among non-Hispanic white residents, Slack said: \u201cIn rural counties that are not adjacent to a metro, nearly all the positive net migration was international.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result,\u00a0about one in four<\/a>\u00a0rural U.S. residents are now nonwhite, while roughly one in three rural children are nonwhite. Nationwide, immigrants\u00a0comprise roughly<\/a>\u00a015% of the U.S. population and 19% of the workforce as of June 2025.<\/p>\n

Mark Prosser, the former police chief of Storm Lake, Iowa, who now works with the Diocese of Sioux City, watched that transformation happening on the ground for over 30 years, as immigration turned a shrinking, nearly all-white community into one with expanding jobs and housing.<\/p>\n

Roughly two-thirds<\/a>\u00a0of students in Storm Lake\u2019s grade schools now speak a language other than English at home, he said. While nearby Iowa communities have been forced to consolidate school systems because of declining enrollment, communities like Storm Lake that have attracted immigrants have built new schools instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I moved here it was blue, and then evolved to purple, and now it\u2019s very red,\u201d he continued. Referring to the political repercussions of the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing\u00a0mass deportation campaign<\/a>\u00a0he added, \u201cThat pendulum is starting to swing because all of a sudden, conservatives are seeing their neighbors impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent polling shows Trump and Republicans\u00a0losing ground on immigration<\/a>, long the president\u2019s strongest issue.<\/p>\n

Between\u00a0600,000 and 675,000 people have been deported<\/a>\u00a0since Trump took office in 2025, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, while a record 65,000 people remain in immigrant detention nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the people being detained and being removed have no criminal record,\u201d Prosser added. \u201cAll of a sudden, their children\u2019s friends in school are not sitting in the classroom on Monday morning because they\u2019ve been detained.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crackdown in Springfield<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Dr. Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, discusses the impact of Trump\u2019s deportation agenda on both the Haitian community and the city of Springfield Ohio where many Haitian immigrants live.<\/em><\/p>\n

Those impacts were visible last week in Springfield, Ohio, where federal immigration agents detained members of the city\u2019s Haitian community in a crackdown that emptied church pews and grocery store aisles.<\/p>\n

Roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants, many with\u00a0Temporary Protected Status<\/a>\u00a0(TPS), began arriving around 2020, the first time the population in this Rust Belt city \u2014\u00a0now around 58,000 \u2014\u00a0had grown\u00a0since 1960<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A late June Supreme Court ruling green lighted the administration\u2019s efforts to end TPS for roughly 350,000 Haitians nationwide. Those protections \u2014\u00a0which include temporary relief from deportation and work authorization \u2014\u00a0ended July 27. The administration has, to date, targeted 13 of 17 countries currently designated under the TPS program, affecting more than one million immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople from my church are being fitted with ankle monitors, picked up by ICE,\u201d said Dr. Carl Ruby, senior pastor of Central Christian Church, whose congregation has grown from 125 to 160 members over the past year, driven entirely by Haitian newcomers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur county government is funded by sales tax, and they\u2019re not going out and shopping right now. We normally would have about 50 Haitians in a church service, and we had almost none this past Sunday. They\u2019re just afraid to leave their homes,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe went from having lots of hardworking immigrants to all of a sudden having 10 to 15,000 people who\u2019ve had their jobs taken away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haiti\u2019s TPS classification began after a catastrophic earthquake in 2010 and was extended by succeeding administrations, including briefly under the first Trump administration, due to continued national\u00a0violence and corruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0plans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late July to ramp up operations to arrest and deport Haitian migrants \u201ca mistake,\u201d \u201ca blow to Springfield\u201d and \u201ca blow to the state of Ohio,\u201d adding, \u201cThe Haitians who are living there and employed there, they came there to work, and they came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruby recalled DeWine asking a local business owner how difficult it would be to replace his Haitian workers. The owner said, \u201cIt will take several Americans to replace each worker,\u201d according to Ruby, adding Haitian employees \u201calways show up for work, they always pass drug tests, they take as much overtime as they can get, and they just work really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the immigrants were staffing our retirement homes, so not only were they having children, they\u2019re caring for our elderly. Those were jobs we had a hard time filling,\u201d said Ruby.<\/p>\n

The economic cost<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Rachel Peri\u0107, executive director of Welcoming America, discusses the Great Replacement narrative, which argues that non-white immigrants will replace white Americans and white American culture.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum (NIF), pointed to data showing that immigrants\u00a0pay nearly<\/a>\u00a0$652 billion annually in combined federal, state and local taxes and generate about $1.7 trillion in consumer spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican businesses having less workers, less people contributing to the economy, less people paying in taxes for things like Social Security, we\u2019re looking at a pretty dire impact overall,\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n

The Congressional Budget Office\u00a0projected<\/a>\u00a0an $8.9 trillion GDP increase from 2024 to 2034 due to immigrants, Murray added. \u201cWe can no longer count on that number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Peri\u0107, executive director of\u00a0Welcoming America<\/a>, said the effects are also social: \u201cRural places are seeing the results of a real breakdown in trust and relationships, with communities fracturing as a result of many of the federal policies aimed at both expelling people from the country, and sowing a lot of fear and division.\u201d<\/p>\n

NIF\u00a0polling shows<\/a>\u00a0that 80% of registered Republicans support Republicans and Democrats working together on \u201cimmigration solutions that balance border security, prioritized enforcement, asylum updates and beneficial legal-immigration pathways,\u201d versus 12% in opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t make our communities whole and we can\u2019t make our communities function if we don\u2019t have efforts to create an environment where people want to come and want to put down roots,\u201d Peri\u0107 said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens to these towns is they age and shrink and die,\u201d Slack added. \u201cIf rural communities in this country are going to survive, immigration has to be part of that equation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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