I recall seeing a sign in a yard in my small hometown of around 12,000 residents. “No matter where you are from,” it said, “we’re glad you are our neighbor.”
It was positioned defiantly, facing a Trump sign that had been plunged into the neighbor’s yard across the street. It poignantly illustrated the tensions in my rural Ohio town, which — like many similar communities — has experienced a rapid influx of immigrants over the last 20 years.
The sign’s sentiment was simple yet profound. I found myself wondering then, as I wonder now, when compassion had become so complicated. It seems everyone has become preoccupied arguing over the minutiae of immigration that they’ve missed the most glaring and essential point: We are neighbors.
While writing this piece, I gathered studies and prepared a detailed analysis of the ways immigrants have transformed and revitalized the economies of the Rust Belt. I was going to explain how immigrants have helped fill vacant housing and industry in this region’s shrinking cities to reverse the toll of population decline.
I gathered statistics showing the economic growth and revitalization that’s happened as immigrants have brought flourishing small businesses to their new communities. Like: Despite making up only around 14 percent of the U.S. population, immigrants own 18 percent of small businesses with employees — and nearly a quarter of small businesses without employees. (And immigrants in Rust Belt cities are even more likely to be entrepreneurs.)
Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, a truth so widely acknowledged that it bridges the ever-growing partisan divide. Both Vice President JD Vance and former Vice President Kamala Harris have promoted the critical role of small businesses in economic flourishing.
I was going to tell a story about Joe, a vendor at my local flea market. He and other vendors were heavily averse to migrants purchasing the dilapidated building from the previous owner. Now they laud the building’s new management and improved conditions.
I was going to describe the experiences of my recently immigrated high school peers, who sometimes fell asleep in class from sheer exhaustion after working night shifts at meatpacking plants and attending school for seven hours the next day.
I was going to explain why communities not only benefit from immigrants, but need them.
Without immigrants, I learned, U.S. communities would lose the nearly $1 trillion of state, local, and federal taxes that immigrants contribute annually. This number is almost $300 billion more than immigrants receive in government benefits.
Without immigration, the U.S. working-age population is projected to decline by approximately 6 million over the next two decades — a shift that would carry significant consequences, especially for the Social Security system. Sustained population growth is critical to preserving a balanced ratio of workers contributing to Social Security for every beneficiary receiving support.
As immigration is expected to become the sole driver of U.S. population growth by 2040, restrictive immigration policies threaten to undermine this vital program, as a cornerstone of the American social safety net. With broad public support for strengthening Social Security, embracing immigration is not just beneficial — it is essential to ensuring the program’s long-term stability and success.
I was prepared to comb through every dissent in an effort to prove why our neighbors are deserving of empathy and compassion. But none of these answers address the larger, more urgent question: When did being neighbors cease to be enough?
Most Americans still tell pollsters immigration is good for their communities and reject cruel deportations, especially those that separate families, target people without criminal records, or penalize people who came here as young children.
My rural Ohio town, and countless communities like it, are slowly learning the most important lesson about this supposedly complicated issue: Compassion doesn’t need to be complicated.
Meredith Lehman is a research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords. org.
