Early evidence is promising. In 2023, the region added 30,000 foreign-born residents, amounting to a 23.2 percent increase in the immigrant population, according to census data. (The New York City area added 88,000, only a 1.5 percent increase.) That was almost enough to offset the loss of 34,000 native-born residents.
“We have no choice but to grow, and the way in which we’re going to do that is through migration to St. Louis,” said Dustin Allison, the interim chief executive of Greater St. Louis Inc., the city’s main business group. “I’m really coldblooded about this. I need bodies, because I need talent in order to attract and retain companies here.”
“You’re seeing shortages in almost every work force, from police officers to teachers to manufacturing,” said Brad Christ, a Republican state representative from a suburban district southwest of the city. “So I’m very pro legal immigration, and there’s really good ways to do it effectively, and I think we’ve done it effectively in St. Louis.”
The approach has worked for other metropolitan areas losing population, like Detroit and Philadelphia, which got started around the same time as St. Louis’s programs. As birthrates decline, immigration is forecast to be the nation’s only source of population growth, and cities with rapidly aging demographics are fighting for their piece of the inflow.
“Given that these places are losing domestic migrants, they’re going to be much more dependent on immigration for their population growth than they have in the past,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who has written about the recent surge of arrivals. Domestic migrants are those coming from other places within the country — or leaving, as the case may be.
Now, the Trump administration is upending that strategy — by taking away refugee resettlement funding, revoking the temporary legal status of other recent immigrants, and potentially constricting employment-based visas. Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Kehoe, has signaled that those without legal status should be worried, directing state law enforcement to pursue illegal migrants and to collect the immigration status of those charged with crimes.
For elected officials in St. Louis (all of whom, in the city itself, are Democrats), antipathy to immigrants on the state and national level creates a stiff headwind to measures that would make this blue city in a red state welcoming to new residents. Politicians from the county, which surrounds but doesn’t 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 president’s policies are creating an unwelcoming environment.”
A Shrinking City