Around the globe, World Refugee Day celebrates the strength and resilience of individuals who have to flee their homes and find safety in foreign places. Far from burdening those who welcome them, refugees contribute significantly to their new neighborhoods. Today we’re highlighting three small cities in the U.S. that illustrate how refugees transform and enrich their new hometowns. The newcomers have found a place to realize their hopes, and they, in turn, have given these towns economic and population boosts, as well as the bounty of diversity and fresh perspectives.
Utica, NY Since 1979, refugees escaping war and persecution have helped to revive the fortunes of this once-fading manufacturing town. Utica’s population, which stood at 100,000 in 1960, plunged by almost half after General Electric and other major manufacturing concerns left town. By the 1990s, arson had destroyed many homes, and the downtown was reduced to sad shells of closed businesses.
Then a remarkable migration began to take place. In the 1970s, Roberta Douglas, a Utica resident, became concerned about the plight of Amerasian children in Vietnam. She helped one Amerasian resettle in Utica. Then, together with Catholic Charities in Syracuse, she started resettling hundreds of Amerasians. Eventually, working with others she established the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which was renamed The Center a few years ago.
In the 40 years since Ms. Douglas began her work, The Center has resettled about 17,000 refugees in Utica, and today about a quarter of Utica’s population of 60,000 is made up of refugees and their families.
Over these four decades the newcomers have kickstarted the city’s economic re-vitalization engine by opening small businesses, renovating down-at-the-heels houses, creating houses of worship—and injecting a sense of vitality to Utica’s streets.
The U.S.-born citizens of Utica have embraced their new neighbors with enthusiasm. As then-Assistant Secretary of State told a U.S. Senate hearing in 2004, “Utica loves refugees. Utica has benefited from refugees. The town was going downhill, but it is now reviving because of refugees.”
Lewiston, Maine is like many of the old industrial towns of New England. Abandoned mills sit at the center of the city, and they serve as memorials to the city’s heyday before the textile industry relocated overseas. The last half of the 20th century was defined by decades of continuous population loss and decreasing wages. Between 1970 and 2000, the city’s population decreased by 15%, and Lewiston’s family and per capita income fell to the lowest ranking in Maine. By 2000, Lewiston’s downtown area became the single poorest census tract within Maine.
But Lewiston stumbled onto a way to rebound. Beginning in 2001, Somali refugees who had previously been resettled in the city of Portland 30 miles to the south began relocating to Lewiston. They had been struggling to afford housing in Portland and were drawn by Lewiston’s more affordable rents. When they arrived, it was, by any measure, a city in severe decline. Boarded up downtown stores were ringed by sagging apartment buildings no longer needed to house workers because so few workers remained.
By the beginning of 2003, more than 1,400 Somali newcomers had come to the city. They settled into and spruced up old apartment buildings and began reopening closed stores on the city’s main street.
Refugees kept coming, and Lewiston became one of the fastest-growing communities in Maine. The crime rate declined, rent prices stabilized, and the city’s economy and population have continued to grow ever since. In 2004, just a few short years after Somalis began arriving, Inc. Magazine named Lewiston one of the best places to do business in America.
This isn’t to say that it has been smooth sailing all along. In 2006, a man rolled a pig’s head through the doorway of a mosque. Residents rallied around the city’s Somali Muslims, though, and denounced the deed and the offender, who was arrested.
News reports suggest that most Lewiston residents count themselves grateful for what they are calling the new Mainers. Some appreciate the reexamination of values that has resulted from the perspectives brought first by Somalis and later by Afghans and Ukrainians who have also settled in Lewiston. One longtime U.S.-born resident was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor putting it like this: “My Somali friends changed the way I [see things]. What matters are relationships. Material things do not equate with happiness.”
Missoula, Montana’s hottest restaurant isn’t a restaurant at all. It’s a project called United We Eat @Home, which offers weekly takeout meals cooked by a rotating team of talented refugee and immigrant chefs. Each week’s chef — from Syria or Iraq or Congo or Pakistan or Eritrea or Guinea or another country — designs a menu based on popular dishes from their home cuisine. The meals are hugely popular with the Missoula’s residents, and they eagerly await the chance to sign up via a weekly email. Any given week’s available supply of meals typically sells out in minutes.
This embrace of cuisines introduced by refugees marks a significant shift in the Montanan mindset. During the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, Montana had been one of only two U.S. states that did not participate in refugee resettlement. A group of Missoulians wanted to change that, and they worked with the International Rescue Committee to open a Montana-based resettlement office to serve refugees and asylees. This led, in turn, to the formation in 2016 of Soft Landing Missoula, an organization that welcomes, supports, and empowers new arrivals in Montana. United We Eat is one of Soft Landing’s most successful projects in support of its mission.
Since 2016, 431 refugees and nearly 100 Afghan evacuees have been resettled in Missoula, and United We Eat has a roster of 18 chefs.
All across the country, from Montana to Maine, from Vermont to Georgia, refugees and asylees are helping revitalize small towns by filling vacant housing and performing entry-level jobs. And they are bringing the wealth of cultural diversity with them. As Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress wrote in his chapter in Vulnerable Communities, The Economic Fortunes of Small Industrial Cities and Towns, “There is little to be lost and much potentially to be gained through efforts to attract Immigrants and refugees.”
Article written by Cynthia Pulham Wolfe.
