Are immigrants driven out of Boston?
Left Center Left speculates that Boston’s population loss is driven by immigrants who are squeezed out by well-to-do natives:
The big net losers are Suffolk and Middlesex. The big net gainers are Worcester, Plymouth, Essex and Bristol. Which really means (given the lack of major suburban and exurban development) the cities of Worcester, Brockton, East Boston, Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford. There is a pattern here: these are precisely the cities that have become destination of the state’s immigrant population (first or second generation) and, secondarily of the working poor, even the subproletariat. They used to be housed in Boston itself but are increasingly priced out.
That’s a counter-factual conclusion based on poorly informed guesswork. These numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, which I linked to yesterday, show you that Boston’s population loss is driven by internal migration, that is, natives leaving the city (technically the county, but Boston makes up most of Suffolk county’s population).
As I also mentioned yesterday, this is continuation of a pattern from the 1990′s: As immigrants move in, Americans move out.
LCL’s policy prescription thus misses the target:
From a policy point of view, it suggests that we as a state need a better approach to economic and civic development in these second cities than we currently have (which is status quo neglect). At the very least, I don’t see how anyone can look at the demographic changes and see in-state tuition for immigrants as a cause for Boston’s population loss.
What we need are less immigration and more assimilation.
It should be pointed out that the in-state tuition controversy is about illegal immigrants getting in-state tuition breaks. Legal immigrants already get those breaks and I don’t anybody has challenged that.
