Torch, Spring/Summer 2012

the nation’s top 25 metro areas. By contrast, cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit metro areas experienced the slowest economic growth and were among cities with the smallest increases in the immigrant share of their labor forces. It’s worth noting how closely the immigrant share of economic output matches the immigrant share of the population. In Pittsburgh, for example, immigrants make up 3 percent of the population and 4 percent of the economic output. In Miami they represent 37 percent of residents and 38 percent of economic output. Surveys of the top 25 metro areas show that immigrants are playing a consistently proportionate role in local economies. State studies on the economic impact of immigrants have reached similar conclusions. A 2007 report on how Latino immigrants impact Arkansas’ state coffers found they have a small but positive net fiscal impact on the state’s budget. Taking into account both education and health care costs, immigrants cost the state $237 million in 2004; but in the same year, they made direct and indirect tax contributions of $257 million. Even more important, the report found immigrants in Arkansas generated about $3 billion in business revenue. Authors of the study concluded that without immigrant labor, the output of Arkansas’ manufacturing industry would have been lowered by about $1.4 billion, or about 8 percent of the industry’s contribution to the state’s gross product. Immigrants also saved Arkansas a bundle in manufacturing wages. It would have cost $95 million more to produce the same output without immigrants. Not only could these savings be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices, but they also helped keep Arkansas’ businesses competitive. Arkansas is better off because of immigrants who expanded its population and thus the demand for consumer goods and services. Nationwide, Arkansas ranked fourth in immigrant population growth between 1990 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2005, the Hispanic population grew by 48 percent, faster than any other state in the U.S. Further, more than half of Arkansas’ immigrants are here illegally. If importing large numbers of low-skilled Latino immigrants was bad for a Spring-Summer 2012 | TORCH 25 DAVID PEDRE | ISTOCKPHOTO