Immigrants make the city of Little Rock rich beyond just cultural diversity. Their presence creates $2 billion for the state.
According to recently released research conducted by the New American Economy along with the Little Rock Regional Chamber and the City of Little Rock, foreign-born residents of the metro Little Rock area contributed $2 billion toward the Gross Domestic Product, $83.8 million in state and local taxes and $157.8 million in federal taxes, according to a May news release from the chamber of commerce. The report lists immigrants as anyone born outside of the United States, no matter their legal status, according to an NAE spokesman as reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The findings were presented April 30 at the Southwest Community Center in Little Rock that included testimony from local immigrants who have contributed vastly to the local economy.
Catholic Charities of Arkansas executive director Patrick Gallaher said it is the fourth in a series of reports released since 2010.
“The trend of each of these reports is consistent — the economic contributions of immigrants to Arkansas substantially outweigh any social costs,” Gallaher said.
The report showed that immigrants made up 4 percent of the Little Rock metro area population with 29,267. Those living within Little Rock city limits total 13,536, 6.9 percent of the city’s population.
Within seven years, starting in 2011, the population jumped by 5.2 percent with the immigrant population rising by 5.8 percent. The majority of immigrants are from Mexico with 34.4 percent, with all other countries of origin, including India, China and Guatemala, at 30.9 percent.
Some key contributions the immigrant population made in 2016 include tax payments to Social Security of $79.6 million and Medicare, $22.6 million.
Gallaher said one point that the report doesn’t directly show is that the “the working demographic of non-immigrants continues to shrink and immigrants are filling gaps that would otherwise exist among the workforce particularly in Arkansas.”
It does state the immigrant contribution however, that 1,346 local manufacturing jobs were preserved or created in Little Rock thanks to the immigrant community. Those include construction (14.5 percent); hospitality and recreation (10.2); general services (6.1); professional services (6.0); and manufacturing (5.0).
Immigrants also made up 9 percent of growing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) industries in 2015.
“You look at some of the statistics here and they don’t show that immigrants are collecting social welfare benefits, especially undocumented immigrants in Arkansas are not eligible for that. What the statistics show is that immigrants are employed in a greater percentage of their population as a whole than the Arkansas-born population is. And what that indicates is that immigrants come to Arkansas to work,” Gallaher said.
