How We Cover Immigration These Days
On that occasion where something I worked up was published, but I feel the need to expand on it a bit further, plus a little shameless self-promotion for a good cause
I’m very proud to be a contributor to West Virginia Watch, the State Newsroom outlet covering my home state of West Virginia. For the uninitiated, State Newsroom is the nation's largest group of non-profit outlets that cover state-level policy and politics. West Virginia Watch is the one for, well…you know, it is right there in the name.
The part you might not know if you aren’t REALLY into West Virginia politics is how that came to be. The collection of reporters working there for the state are amazing people. Their background in the state as journalists could make a movie. Some came from legacy media outlets like the Charleston Gazette newspaper, which went from winning a Pulitzer Prize for journalism to firing its core group of young journalists for daring to be journalists in the span of just a few years. Or the case of the great Amelia Knisley during that same time period, as good a reporter as there is anywhere, who was fired from WV Public by the former comms director for the sitting governor of for daring to report on the horrendous conditions in state-run facilities and the perpetually bad WV child protective system. If you are wondering, in the nearly two years since that happened, the powers that be in the state aren’t any more cooperative with her, and Amelia is just as doggedly reporting on them as ever.
There are many other reporters and good outlets doing good work in the Mountain State as well. West Virginia has, at least in my lifetime, an amazing local media and journalism presence that punches far above its weight. Which is great for the state and the people therein, in my humble but accurate opinion. A state that went from a century of Democratic Party domination to the current second decade of total Republican Party political control within the last 20 years needs good journalists covering such seismic shifts and unfettered power.
Anywoo, the point is being a contributor (full disclosure a paid one) to West Virginia Watch is something I’m particularly proud of. Getting a platform to write commentary on West Virginia specific issues is a privilege. It also means a responsibility to write about things that really matter in a way that folks whom I consider my own friends, family, and cohort will give a fair hearing to.
With immigration being a dominating headline, I took a stab at talking about how this national issue that dominates bandwidth and election cycles applies directly to West Virginia in my latest for West Virginia Watch.
Here is an excerpt:
Statistically, however, West Virginia sees shockingly little of immigrants these days, or new U.S. citizens. Or immigrants of any type. Or, for that matter, much population growth of any kind. While illegal immigration and undocumented people remain the hottest of hot button issues, the Mountain State is far behind the rest of the country in legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security reports West Virginia ranks 50th out the 50 states and four territories in naturalizations, 51 in lawful permanent residents, 50th in new arrivals, 52nd in nonimmigrant arrivals, 51st in those granted or legally pursing asylum and 51st in “adjustment of status” lawful permanent residents
Those rankings stand out for a state that was the only one in the latest census to lose population. Births are trailing deaths in West Virginia, which has the third highest average age of citizen, by just under 34,000 in the three year census period. There is some good news in that the net migration of folks coming and going has creeped to the positive by a bit, but every little bit helps.
Still, the reality is the Mountain State doesn’t have enough people and faces having even less with each passing year. Declining population has obvious downsides, like the loss of a congressional district and that representation and voting power in Washington, D. C. and in the economic impact of not having businesses or the workers to run them. But the ripple effect of the population loss is the undercurrent to most of the major issues in West Virginia like the constant consolidation of schools, fights over funding public services and PEIA, and the balance of funding and servicing an electorate that contributes less and less revenue from fewer and fewer citizens.
While the answers to West Virginia’s population woes should be “all of the above” to try and solve the people problem, immigration and naturalized citizens is a good place to start. Any scheme to increase the birth rate by its very nature is a generational plan that will take decades to show improvement. Aligning that birth rate closer to the death rate in an aging state with perpetual financial troubles is a big ask of the state government. Advertising, recruiting and making the state inviting for the diaspora of folks born and raised in West Virginia but who ventured elsewhere for whatever reason to return home should be a priority. But becoming more friendly and inviting to legal immigration and turning new Americans into lifelong West Virginians is an immediately attainable goal.
West Virginia will probably never be top of the legal immigration table with the New Yorks, New Jerseys, Californias and Floridas of the country. But with the difference in birth rate and death rate being less than 34,000, just getting West Virginia’s immigration rankings up into the 40s might be enough to get the state out of the population red
Read the whole thing here, only costs you a click and supports the great local journalism I’ve been raving about here.
My attempt is to talk about the issue of immigration as a people issue first, and how it affects everyone, rather than the outrage bait and well-worn ruts of the immigration coverage we saw during the election, in the non-stop political ads, and in campaign rhetoric. Folks bring their owner priors, prejudices, and preconceived notions to topics like immigration. But under that human nature mess is some hard math and facts on the ground that need to be reckoned with beyond selectively picking the worst case scenarios and waving them at the entire country as the bloody shirt of truth. Because for the new media dispensation of time we live in, everything is a bloody shirt all the time because that’s what sells these days.
We can at least try. I’m trying. Try with me.