How would changes in immigration policy affect New Bedford?

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With its imposing hurricane barrier like a golden door, New Bedford’s harbor gives refuge to the Ernestina-Morrissey, the famed sailing ship that was the last of its kind to carry immigrants in regular service to the United States. Its journeys to Cape Verde from 1948 until 1965 helped New Bedford grow the largest Cape Verdean population in the United States, though that community’s presence dates back to the city’s whaling days. 

The wooden schooner, like the city, has moored its impressive and winding history to a tradition of immigration. Its mast and hull have been the backdrop for New Bedford residents as they’ve voted in recent elections. But this year’s contest has transformed immigration into a more significant — if not the most important — issue that divides candidates and voters across the state and nation. 

Massachusetts residents have highlighted immigration as the single most important issue facing the state. And the majority of all U.S. voters (including more than 8 in 10 Donald Trump supporters) say immigration is “very important” in their decision on how to vote — a 9% increase since the 2020 presidential election.

The issue has also become a rallying cry down ballot in a local race for state representative. Joe Pires, himself the child of Cape Verdean immigrants in New Bedford, has aligned with former President Trump and his proposal to dramatically increase deportations. 

Though far from the country’s southern border, New Bedford is sensitive to national immigration policies, say local officials and researchers. About 20% of the city’s population is foreign-born, according to recent census data, compared to 18% across Massachusetts. Both presidential candidates have promised tougher border control to stem the flow of undocumented crossings, though the specifics of their plans — and their attitudes toward immigration — differ starkly.

Vice President Kamala Harris says she hopes to reform “our broken immigration system” by employing more border officers and improving their technology, according to her campaign website. She intends to bring back a border security bill that was introduced by a bipartisan coalition (including James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.), and which did not pass, after Trump vocally denounced it on his social media site, Truth Social.

Trump warns about an “onslaught of illegal aliens invading our wide-open borders” on his campaign website. He has called current border policies a “fraud” and “disaster,” and cites an increase in land border crossings during and after the pandemic. (These have fallen sharply in 2024.) Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden this weekend featured many anti-immigrant and racist remarks, including speakers saying America is “for Americans only.”

In New Bedford, the local immigrant community has felt genuine and rising fear, said Adrian Ventura, an organizer who leads Centro Comunitario De Trabajadores, a group that advocates for New Bedford’s many immigrant workers. Ventura, speaking in Spanish, said that Trump’s rhetoric is a “threat” even in New Bedford. Ventura said he’s been in contact with police after Trump supporters have been intimidating people in front of his organization’s office building. 

In June 2023, Massachusetts faced a surge of new arrivals that pushed its emergency shelter system to the brink. The lifting of federal policies like Title 42 — once used to turn away migrants under COVID-19 concerns — opened the door to those long denied entry. Meanwhile, a humanitarian parole program allowing nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela temporary entry to the U.S., added to the influx.

As the Massachusetts shelter population rose from 4,000 to 7,500 families, the state scrambled to redirect funds to manage the surge. In fall 2023, with shelters at full capacity, Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency. In July 2024, the Massachusetts Emergency Assistance Commission projected the cost for 2025: keeping 7,500 families housed and services running would require $1 billion.

As New Bedford voters weigh their decisions up and down the ballot, immigration is likely to be part of the conversation. To a large extent, immigration has shaped the present moment in New Bedford and across Massachusetts, experts say — everything from the local school budget, to the labor force and unemployment rate, to the health of key industries have all been bolstered by immigration.

Here’s how the “tempest-tost” are contributing once they reach New Bedford.

The economy and education

The economies of New Bedford, Bristol County, and Massachusetts have all achieved labor forces of record or near-record size, which have contributed to historically low unemployment rates that consistently beat the national average. 

Immigration is the reason.

“Close to 80% of labor growth in Massachusetts over the last three decades, since 1990, has been due to the gains of foreign-born labor,” said Mark Melnik, a researcher with the UMass Donahue Institute. 

Melnik explained that the most significant long-term economic issue in Massachusetts is a declining labor supply. The state’s aging population, coupled with today’s smaller family sizes (largely due to a highly-educated female population that tends to participate in the workforce), means that younger generations are outnumbered by their elders and growth to the economy is threatened.

“We want the population and labor force to grow,” he said. “That’s what allowed businesses to grow.”

Massachusetts has one of the largest immigrant populations anywhere in the United States, and it’s specifically that fact that has bolstered the economy. Immigrants have fueled local economies by sparking innovation and driving up wages, according to researchers at Boston University. Moreover, they contributed $18.4 billion in taxes in a recent year. 

However, the benefits brought by immigrants are not equally distributed. “The flow of new residents does nothing to boost the wages of existing workers who don’t have a high school diploma,” read a summary of the BU research — which authors said might explain the political division on immigration issues.

And the effects of immigration are also showing up inside local high schools, which are both shaping the economy today and determining its growth into the future. In New Bedford, up to 60% of municipal spending goes toward public education, and the school department is the city’s largest employer. Nearly 45% of students in New Bedford speak a first language other than English, and that rate has about doubled in the last decade.

With the state’s school funding formula tied to enrollment, the population of immigrant students is responsible for keeping school funding steady. “Massachusetts is going to continue to have a smaller population,” said New Bedford Superintendent Andrew O’Leary, and he has reviewed projections that indicate New Bedford’s school population will decrease, too. 

“It hasn’t happened this year,” O’Leary said. He noted that immigration has buoyed enrollment while the rest of the student population has started to decrease. “If there is a national hostility to immigrants, that can affect their stability.”

Melnik, the UMass Donahue researcher, sees immigrants in schools as the key to economic gains in the future. “Once folks have English skills, they unlock more opportunities in the labor market.” He said there’s also “skill and talent available” in immigrant parents, and more education opportunities will help them to realize economic potential by “using that skill when they’re in the U.S.”

As an example, O’Leary cites himself. “I feel that I have benefitted from America’s tradition of immigration,” said the Cork, Ireland, native. “We’d be well-served to ensure that families from other regions of the world are allowed to make their contribution as well.”

O’Leary sees “a richer community” for his own family, including sons who are learning Spanish in New Bedford’s schools and speaking it with their friends. Immigration, he said, “is not a burden; it’s a great opportunity for New Bedford to be enriched over the next decades.”

Plans for mass deportations

Former President Trump’s hardline stance on immigration has intensified since his first campaign. He now promises stricter measures and the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Vice President Harris and many Democrats have toughened their rhetoric too, focusing more on border security than on immigrants’ rights.

This shift reflects a growing sentiment among voters. At least half of Americans support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a September 2024 survey from Scripps News/Ipsos.

Experts say that no government agency has the resources or ability to carry out such an operation. But if one did, the results would be disastrous to the economy, studies show. Removing undocumented residents from mixed-status households — where U.S. citizens live with undocumented residents — would cut the median household income nearly in half, dropping it from $41,300 to $22,000, due to the loss of financial support from parents, partners, or household workers. That drop, according to the Center for Migration Studies, would push millions of families into poverty.

Massachusetts is home to 200,000 undocumented immigrants, according to a 2019 estimate from the Migration Policy Institute. 

In New Bedford, many undocumented immigrants live and work in the shadows, often waiting years for immigration reforms, said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center. “There’s so many different economic sectors that have depended on immigrants to fulfill the economic need in the labor market,” she said.

Undocumented immigrants on the South Coast are vital to sectors like child care, agriculture, construction, landscaping, and, most importantly, the fishing industry, she noted. “The need for hands-on labor to process harvested fish could paralyze the port and the local economy.”

In particular, large-scale deportations would cause rampant inflation for New Bedford’s consumers. “The idea of mass deportations is inflationary by its very nature,” said Melnik, of the UMass Donahue Institute. Removing a “ton of workers” would limit the goods that can be produced and cause employers to pay much higher wages to attract scarce workers, passing on the costs to consumers. 

Ventura, a Guatemalan-American immigrant and labor activist, said that immigrants prop up New Bedford’s fishing industry, which is by far its largest economic engine. Trump’s stance on deportation, Ventura said, has caused anxiety among local families and has emboldened racism in the community.

The ripple effects wouldn’t end there. Undocumented immigrants are, surprisingly to some, taxpayers, too. In 2022 alone, they contributed nearly $100 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The more than $18 billion that all immigrants paid in Massachusetts supported Medicare and Social Security. Yet, undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for most federal programs.

“Undocumented workers are also floating our Social Security system,” said Williams. She said mass deportation would open up budget shortfalls in health and unemployment insurance.

Carrying out a mass deportation would come with an enormous price tag. To arrest, detain, process, and deport a million people each year, the government would need to establish new immigration courts and ICE facilities, reassign federal agents to immigration duties, and redeploy thousands of troops from overseas to the U.S.-Mexico border. A recent report from the American Immigration Council estimated that such a one-time operation would cost at least $315 billion. If extended over a decade, the effort would average $88 billion per year — eleven times what the U.S. government spends annually on cancer research.

The threat of deportations and the possibility of Trump’s reelection have reignited fear at New Bedford’s Immigrant Assistance Center (IAC). Helena DaSilva Hughes, the center’s president and CEO, said the current anxiety and uncertainty among immigrants is unlike anything she’s experienced in her 40 years there.

“We’re seeing an increase in citizenship applications, and even new citizens are asking questions about the voting process,” DaSilva Hughes said. “This election has immigrants very nervous about the future of this country, their adoptive country. They’re asking themselves, ‘What’s going to happen?’”

Kenneth Amoriggi, legal director of the immigration department at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River believes that the immigration positions of both the Republican and Democratic parties should worry everyone, at least for economic reasons. For him, though, it’s also a human rights issue.

“The escalating rhetoric on both sides, it’s essentially just scapegoating an entire class of people who are coming here for protection and to better their lives,” said Amoriggi. “They’re not criminals by any stretch of the imagination.”

Immigration and crime

The portrayal of immigrants as criminals has long been used as a political lightning rod. Trump often places it at the center of his campaigns, claiming that undocumented immigrants drive up violent crime.

While this rhetoric resonates in political debates, research over the years shows no evidence of a link, said Roni Amit, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at UMass Dartmouth, a program where law students assist immigrant clients with their cases. “Undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than citizens.”

In fact, recent studies have suggested the opposite: that immigrants commit fewer crimes. Undocumented immigrants were about 30% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens, according to findings from a 2019 article in Oxford Economic Papers. The gap doubles to 60% less likely when considering the broader immigrant population, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which reviewed 150 years of census data.

“Because they are ‘illegal,’ they are labeled as criminals,” said Amoriggi, of Catholic Charities in Fall River. The anti-immigrant rhetoric often relies on semantics, he explained, “but this paints an overly broad picture of what it means to be a criminal.”

Data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse supports this view. In fiscal year 2024, Massachusetts handled nearly 32,000 deportation cases. Most were for immigration violations, primarily for entering the country without inspection, while only about 260 cases involved criminal charges. This shows that most deportations are related to immigration status, not violent crimes.

“Deportation is not a criminal punishment,” explained Amit. “It is an administrative measure if you don’t have the legal basis to remain in the country.”

Although Trump’s claims that undocumented individuals are criminals were debunked repeatedly during his campaign, Williams, of the Community Economic Development Center, said that immigrant rights advocates are concerned about the lasting impact of such narratives among the immigrant community.

“This rhetoric is dangerous,” said Williams. “For immigrants in particular, it creates a reluctance to come forward when they are victims of crime or domestic violence.”

How to move forward

With immigration becoming the most divisive issue, some of the research has also found what underlies people’s attitudes.

“Living near people from other countries can shift native views on people of foreign descent, decreasing hostility and prejudice, while boosting empathy and knowledge,” according to Boston University researchers. They added that, “Residents who live alongside those people may also be less likely to vote for political candidates who demonize them.”

In New Bedford, that means children in the public schools today will acquire more empathy and knowledge than their peers in less diverse towns. Parents who engage in their community will see those benefits, too.

And while this year’s presidential candidates have seized on the emotions of the immigration issue, “it really takes Congress” to make changes to immigration policy, said Melnik, the UMass Donahue researcher. “I am skeptical that sensible immigration policy advances through Congress in the next few years,” he said.

Immigrants have been vital to the New Bedford and Massachusetts economy, experts say, and it will continue to depend on immigration — and the national policies and attitudes that shape it.

Melnik sees two pillars of immigration policy: “The U.S. role in human rights and balancing economic needs,” and he said, “These two things can overlap with each other.”

In New Bedford, Superintendent O’Leary says the city can look to its own history — including welcoming Cape Verdean immigrants fleeing drought, Madeiran immigrants escaping an earthquake, or America’s own refugees on the Underground Railroad — as a path to support immigrants.

“The model has worked in New Bedford,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was amended on Oct. 30, 2024, to correct a statement about Massachusetts immigrants and taxes. They contributed $18.4 billion in taxes in a recent year.

Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org and Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org