Tariq Nelson

Otherwise many areas would lose population

Without immigrants pouring into the nation’s big metro areas, places such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston would be losing population.

Many smaller areas, including Battle Creek, Michigan, Ames, Iowa, and Corvallis, Oregon, would lose people as well, according to population estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

“Immigrants are filling the void as domestic migrants are seeking opportunities in other places,” said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a private research organization.

The New York metro area, which includes suburbs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, added 1 million immigrants from 2000 to 2006. Without those immigrants, the region would have lost nearly 600,000 people.

Without immigration, the Los Angeles, California, metro area would have lost more than 200,000, the San Francisco, California, area would have lost 188,000 and the Boston, Massachusetts, area would have lost 101,000.

[...]

Among the findings:

• Atlanta added more people than any other metro area from 2000 to 2006. The Atlanta area added 890,000 people, putting its population at about 5.1 million. Gaining the most after Atlanta were Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, Houston, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, and Riverside, California.

• On a percentage basis, St. George in southwest Utah was the fastest growing metro area from 2000 to 2006. St. George’s population jumped by 40 percent, to 126,000. The next highest percentage increases were in Greeley, Colorado, Cape Coral, Florida, Bend, Oregon, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

• The New Orleans, Lousiana, area, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, lost nearly 290,000 people from 2005 to 2006, reducing its population to slightly more than 1 million. The Gulfport-Biloxi area in Mississippi, also hit hard by Katrina, lost nearly 27,000 people, dropping its population to 227,900.

• Parts of the Rust Belt also had large declines. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, metro area led the way, losing 60,000 people from 2000 to 2006. Its population loss was followed by declines in Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, New York, Youngstown, Ohio, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.

• Houston edged past Miami, Florida, to become the sixth largest metro area, with about 5.5 million people. Miami slipped to seventh.

[...]

Advocates for stricter immigration laws question whether a stable, or even a shrinking population, is bad.

“Don’t we have concerns about congestion and sprawl and pollution?” asked Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration policies.

“Maybe those metro areas should think about what it would take to make Americans want to live there,” Camarota said.

The DC area was ranked 8th in overall population growth. The population change rankings are here [.pdf] and the overall metro population rankings are here [.pdf]

Some areas were ranked higher than I thought. I would have thought that Denver (21) was bigger than St Louis (1 and Baltimore (20). Although Dallas (4) is a very nice city, it was still a little surprising it pass Philadelphia (5).