We saw in Twin Valley, Minnesota (population 723, down by 100 from 2010 to 2020), how significant of a service immigrant families were providing to our community. Because of the influx of large, young families moving into our town, there was greater support for our local businesses, churches and school.

I saw firsthand how these new families helped revitalize our community. However, just as our small town seemed to be growing, the Trump administration enacted policies that put a large number of innocent families throughout Minnesota and America into hiding and relocation.

The benefits rural communities like Twin Valley have seen by welcoming new youth can be seen at a national level, too. Like most Western countries, our dependency ratio (seniors to working age citizens) is increasing sharply. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2030, one in five Americans will be of retirement age, and that by 2034, older adults are projected to outnumber children.

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Fortunately, at a much more significant scale than other Western countries, we have a large number of immigrants seeing the opportunity to build a life in the United States. According to Migration Policy, most people who immigrate to the United States are younger and contribute directly to expanding our pool of young workers. Immigration is helping our country slow the effects of an aging population and some of the most severe demographic pressures faced by other developed nations.

These may seem like irrelevant, macro-level statistics that we will not need to see in our daily lives. But, in returning to my hometown story, I reflect on my church growing up. For most of my life, our congregation, like most small-town churches, hosted a strong family of community members who came to worship each week. Over the years, there have been difficulties related to young people moving away or not attending church, as well as elderly members passing away. 

Because of local employment opportunities, we began welcoming new immigrant families into our community. Suddenly, we were handing out candy at church again, seeing new young faces, baptizing babies and young adults, and hosting more community services. What happened in our church mirrors what happened in Twin Valley. We lost members as people grew older, died, or left town for jobs. But immigrant families filled some of those empty pews and helped keep the attendance numbers steady.

This success story is a local example of a national trend that Republicans don’t seem to recognize. Small towns are taking the brunt of the stalling of U.S. population growth. As with the general U.S. population, immigration provides a clear way to help support our elders by expanding the pool of working-class Americans in local communities.

Related: Immigrants and refugees in Minnesota — connecting past and present

In the last 30-40 years, our community, like so many other small towns, has continued to face the consequences of population decline. There are fewer students in our school, fewer customers supporting local businesses and more churches joining together to share expenses — sometimes even resulting in changes to worship times and days or local closures.

The issue of declining populations and the fear of local history not being preserved is an existential one for the millions of Americans who live in small towns. I know it is an issue that helped push me into public service from a young age. People in rural communities hold a wide range of political views about immigration policy. But the political disagreements can look very different when immigrants are your coworkers, kids’ classmates, customers or congregation members.

As such, there has never been a greater imperative for Republicans to end their aggressive immigration crackdowns. It is a matter of life and death for our small towns, and not enough people yet recognize how a vote for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a vote against the welfare of our own communities. We need to save our small towns, and that starts with welcoming immigrants.

Maxwell Fjeld is a community organizer and student at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

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