Legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield were thrust in the national spotlight during the presidential campaign. President Trump is taking steps to deport undocumented immigrants, and that has even people who have legal status worried.
Steven Hubbard, a data analyst with the American Immigration Council, said a 2022 American Community Survey, done for the U.S. Census, showed 4.9% of the population of Ohio, about 581,000 residents, were immigrants under various statuses. Of those, he said 54.1% are naturalized citizens. He added 104,000 were undocumented immigrants, and they're spread out throughout the state.
Hubbard says about 8% of the immigrants in Ohio are entrepreneurs.
“One thing we know about immigrants is that they've taken some risk to come here and to be into a new country, a new place," Hubbard said. "That risk is sort of the same type of thing that drives business and people becoming part of the business culture, starting their own business within the state."
Hubbard said the survey showed about 365,000 immigrants are in the workforce.
“There's so many different industries that have higher shares of immigrant workers. For instance, in transportation and warehousing, 9.2% of the workers within that industry are immigrants,” Hubbard said. He indicated 6.6% of the immigrants worked in hospitality and 6.3% of them worked in healthcare and social assistance. And that’s a slightly higher percentage than the general workforce population: “so many of these industries rely on immigrants.”
Hubbard said the household income of immigrants within the state of Ohio is $25.6 billion. He added they pay federal, state and local taxes.
“Immigrants paid $2.4 billion in 2022, and in federal taxes they paid $4.6 billion for a total of $7.8 billion are going into both state, local, and federal taxes and that leaves them with spending power of $18.6 billion within the state,” Hubbard said.
Deporting immigrants part of federal immigration policy change
One of the first things President Trump did after being sworn into office was to beef up the southern border and sign an executive order changing immigration policy. The American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a suit over one of those provisions regarding birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is currently afforded to children born on American soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. It’s part of the 14th amendment to the constitution.
Hubbard said deporting undocumented immigrants could affect many birthright children in Ohio.
“31,800 US citizen children are living in Ohio with at least one undocumented parent. And 1.3% of the US citizens living in Ohio have at least one undocumented parent,” Hubbard said.
Trump has not detailed the process he will use for deporting immigrants nor has he specified which ones his administration will round up first.
“You can imagine in some immigrant communities there are concerns, hearing about mass deportation and what that means,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard said there’s no data to show the mood of the immigrant communities in Ohio but it’s not hard to imagine many have concerns that might lead them to change the way they live.
“I think the industries that we're most concerned about where that could happen would be something like in construction and in agriculture where we do see a larger share of the workforce who are immigrants, and many of those being undocumented immigrants,” Hubbard said. "I think there would be a concern within those areas of if they were to be deported or if they were fearful going to their workplace that they may not contribute. And we may see more demand for jobs in these areas that are already kind of needing more workers.”
Hubbard said undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive Social Security or other forms of government assistance. But he said if they are working and drawing a paycheck, they are paying into the system.
