We have constructed a metric that measures the impact immigrants have
on their local economies. It is composed of three key indicator values
for immigrants as a proportion of values for the local community
(PUMA) they reside in:
tax contributions, entrepreneurship
and
participation in key industries. Let's take a look at this metric for 2012.
On this map,
blue
indicates PUMAs that fostered significant immigrant contributions to
their local economy,
white
indicates standard PUMAs where immigrants contributed at par with
their share of the population and
yellow
indicates PUMAs where immigrant contributions were under-utilized.
We visualize the PUMAs in which immigrant contributions are
significantly different from the expected value in the dot plot below.
The dots are sized according to the number of immigrants in the PUMA
and are colored according to the impact score of immigrants in those
communities.
Using our Immigrant Impact Metric we can see that
87% of immigrants live in
PUMAs that are either fostering increased contributions or maintaining
proportional immigrant economic contributions to the local economy.
Moreover, immigrants are nationally overrepresented in PUMAs where
they are making
outsize contributions!
26.9% of the immigrant
population lives in fostering PUMAs — which make up only
17.9%
of the total PUMAs in the country.
It’s clear from the dot plot that not all PUMAs have the same share
of immigrants. In this sense, the map can actually be misleading
since larger PUMAs (regardless of their immigrant population) draw
more attention.
To give you some perspective on where immigrants live in the US,
let’s quickly scale states by their immigrant populations.
For the sake of clarity we'll continue with the regular map but it’s
important to keep in mind that PUMA size isn’t representative of the
immigrant population and their relative impact.
To better understand regional trends in immigrant contributions, lets
smooth out this map and take a look at regional hotspots.
Across time, the overall proportional breakdown of immigrant economic
impact remains pretty consistent. PUMAs that foster immigrants are more
common and hold consistently larger immigrant populations than those
that under-utilize them.
However, there are some clear regional hotspots that need further
exploration. Let's take a look at these regions in more detail with
2017 data.
We divide the US into 5 major regions and rank them by their share of
fostering PUMAs. The Southwest ranks first with both the largest share
of fostering PUMAs and the smallest share of under-utilizing PUMAs. In
other words, 92.6% of its PUMAs are either standard or fostering
PUMAs.
Let’s take a closer look at the variation within these regions by
looking at states.
Lastly, let’s look at economic impact across the urban/rural divide.
By analyzing the proportional economic contributions of immigrants in their local communities, we can compare their impact and give a more comprehensive picture of their contributions across the country.
We show that more often than not, immigrants are making outstanding contributions. However, not all immigrants are contributing at the same levels across the country.
National disparities in contributions do not say anything inherent about the immigrants’ propensity to contribute. In fact, instances of under-contribution are often in constant flux and geographically clustered. We hope that highlighting these disparities across regions, states and metropolitan areas will illuminate how political environments and structures may be helping uplift some immigrant communities while limiting others.