https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/09/14/segregation-and-changing-populations-shape-regions-politics/Evidence shows that immigration has benefited the Rust Belt demographically and economically. A steady stream of immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East—a very different immigrant population than the Europeans who settled in the Midwest beginning more than 150 years ago—has slowed the hollowing out of the region’s bigger cities and small factory towns in recent decades. In most of the Midwest today, immigrants are a major source—and in some communities the only source—of population and new business growth. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, from 2000 to 2015, non-native born populations in Midwest metros grew 34 percent (more than 1 million people), and accounted for 37 percent of all Midwest communities’ population growth. From Racine and Janesville, Wis. in the west, to Akron, Ohio and Erie, Pa. in the east, growth in immigrant populations has compensated for losses or outpaced modest growth of native-born populations.