SOUTH BEND — More than half of Michiana’s population growth from 2011 to 2016 — almost 59 percent of it — came from immigrants.
And the area’s foreign-born residents in 2016 were a little more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher than U.S.-born residents here.
After local immigrants paid about $315 million in state, local and federal taxes, they were left with $880.3 million in spending power. So, they held 6.9 percent of the area’s spending power, while they made up 6.3 percent of the population.
Those numbers were released Friday in a study of population data for St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall counties in Indiana and Berrien and Cass counties in Michigan, up to 2016. They were presented by Andrew Lim, director of quantitative research for New American Economy, which started out of the New York City’s mayor’s office in 2010 to “seek a rational way to talk about immigration … to find something that appeals to everyone.”
“When you welcome people, it’s good for everyone,” he told a group of civic and nonprofit leaders.
There were 45,543 immigrants in Michiana in 2016, compared with the total population of 723,462 he reported. Immigrant numbers grew by 8.1 percent across Michiana from 2011 to 2016, compared with just 0.8 percent growth for the whole area.