Immigration-friendly cities are just smart business

On Monday, Americans celebrated Citizenship Day. Throughout the country, cities big and small — in red states and blue states — have come together to mark the occasion with celebrations of something fundamental to America’s great history.

These cities, rightly, will celebrate immigration.

We won’t see the same leadership out of Washington, unfortunately. As Congress continues to fail to fix a broken immigration system, the contrast between our federal lawmakers and city leaders couldn’t be starker. Cities are stepping up their efforts to attract newcomers and grow. They’re cutting through the political noise — and stressing the value of the investments that America makes in immigrants, and that immigrants make in America. Cities are also using a new tool to promote how they’re faring when it comes to expanding opportunity for both their immigrant and U.S.-born residents.

The NAE Cities Index — released this week by the bipartisan immigration reform group New American Economy — is the first-ever scoring system for how America’s 100 largest cities are helping immigrants integrate. Every year, cities will receive a score based on dozens of different factors, ranging from city policymaking to socioeconomic outcomes.

So far, the results show the best-performing cities typically fit into one of three profiles — each to the benefit of all their residents, the U.S.-born and immigrants alike.

Take Newark and Baltimore, for instance. For years, they stood hollowed out. Now, immigrants are arriving with educations and much-needed skills, and they are helping stem population loss and create jobs as entrepreneurs.

Or, consider New York and San Francisco, traditional entry points and touchstones of the American immigrant experience. Today, these cities focus on providing immigrants with basic access to services and information. That kind of inclusivity, in turn, makes these cities attractive to the creative class and to the startups and big businesses that follow them.

Or, look at Atlanta and Greensboro, among some of America’s fastest-growing cities. These rising powers increasingly attract both foreign-born and U.S.-born newcomers, who, together, form the workforces enticing to growing companies.

As one of the nation’s most diverse cities, Houston, too, has taken steps to becoming more inclusive of immigrant communities from around the world. In the 2018 Cities Index, the city boasts a perfect score 5 out of 5 in the area of government leadership, as well as an entrepreneurship rate among its immigrant population that exceeds that of the U.S.-born — 12.1 percent vs 8.0 percent.

The leaders of these different cities embrace immigration not simply because they’re do-gooders, or because it makes for a nice story. Embracing immigration isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s smart business.

Think about when global companies such as Amazon set out to build a new headquarters. They scout for locations with well-educated, highly skilled and diverse populations. They make their selections based on the data. And the data on how immigration strengthens the local workforce is abundantly clear. Immigration helps companies fill jobs. It helps drive demand, too, for all kinds of local businesses. From the latest city-level data, we also know immigration fosters and rewards entrepreneurship, whether the entrepreneur is foreign-born or Americanborn. Bottom line, immigration helps create a virtuous cycle of development, and it would be political malpractice for cities to fail to promote it.

So, while the Beltway talks, cities take action. While Washington puts up red tape, cities remove barriers to integration and advancement. While D.C. hesitates and loses, cities stay proactive and win the global competition for talent and investment. Cities treat immigration not as a political football but a growth strategy.

Immigration is a boon not only for the immigrants making a better life here, but also for their neighbors and for all the Americans who share in the rewards of our country’s freedoms and economic opportunities. The cities that top the NAE Cities Index understand that fact well and use it to drive their policymaking.

More cities would do well to follow the leaders, and send a message to Washington that immigration is worth celebrating.