North Hill Foreign Economics

North Hill’s foreign-born are nationally recognized as economic drivers in CNN report

By Doug Livingston 
Beacon Journal staff writer

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Published: February 9, 2017 - 03:34 PM | Updated: February 10, 2017 - 05:17 PM

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In the midst of an international debate over welcoming or rejecting refugees, Akron’s North Hill is getting national attention as an example of how integration can drive the economy.

CNNMoney’s Wednesday report, “How immigrants helped save the economy of Akron, Ohio,” takes economic stock of North Hill’s outsized foreign-born population.

“The foreign-born people are helping us. They want to send their kids to school, they buy houses and they pay taxes,” Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan told CNN in the story, which includes interviews with local refugee families and business owners.

The economic impact of refugees, who are estimated to account for one in four foreign-born in North Hill, has been well-documented.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that Ohio received nearly one in five Bhutanese refugees who came to America in 2015. Many settled in North Hill, which has become a national beacon attracting countless more refugees from Nepal, Bhutan and other southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries upset by genocide or civil war.

A study released at the height of the presidential election by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group of 500 mayors and business leaders, found that foreign-born residents, including immigrants and refugees, added $207 million to housing values in Summit County from 2000 and 2013, and kept Akron’s population relatively flat from 2007 to 2013.

The CNN spotlight and other economic studies straddle an executive order signed at the end of January by President Donald Trump.

The order temporarily halts refugee intakes while giving Christians and non-Muslims persecuted in seven countries in the Middle East and Africa a path to enter America. Trump has said the temporary pause, which blocks normal travel from the seven Muslim-majority countries, is not a Muslim ban.

The CNN report also cites the libertarian Cato Institute, which found that low-income refugees are less likely than impoverished Americans to access government assistance, a trend Summit County officials said holds true locally.