Early evidence is promising. In 2023, the region added 30,000 residents born abroad, which according to the allotment data was an increase in the immigrant population of 23.2 percent. (The New York City area added 88,000, only an increase of 1.5 percent.) That was almost enough to compensate for the loss of 34,000 indigenous residents.
“We have no choice but to grow, and the way we are going to do that is through migration to St. Louis,” said Dustin Allison, the interim chief executive of Greater St. Louis Inc., the most important business group of the city. “I'm really cold blood about this. I need bodies because I need talent to attract and retain companies here. “
“You see deficits in almost every workforce, from police officers to teachers to production,” said Brad Christ, a Republican state representative from a district in the suburbs southwest of the city. “So I am a very pro -legal immigration, and there are really good manners to do it effectively, and I think we have done it effectively in St. Louis.”
The approach has worked for other metropolitan areas that lose the population, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, who started the programs of St. Louis around the same time. As birth rates decrease, immigration is expected to become the only source of population growth of the country and cities fight with rapidly aging demography for their part of the inflow.
“Given that these places lose domestic migrants, they will be much more dependent on immigration for their population growth in the past,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who wrote about the recent increase in arrivals. Domestic migrants are those from other places in the country – or leave, depending on the case.
Now the Trump administration that increases strategy is being eliminated by removing refugees for refugees, to withdraw the temporary legal status of other recent immigrants and possibly limit visas based on work. The Republican governor of Missouri, Mike Kehoe, has indicated that those without legal status must be worried, so that the state's law enforcement is instructed to pursue illegal migrants and collect immigration status from those in charge of crimes.
For chosen officials in St. Louis (who are all in the city itself democrats), antipathy against immigrants creates and national level creates a stiff headwind towards measures that would welcome this blue city in a red state in a red state for new residents. Politicians from the province, which surrounds but does not include the city, are on the same page.
“We want people who can come here and work and bring their skills,” said Sam Page, the St. Louis County Executive and also a Democrat. “The policy of the president creates an unwanted environment.”
