Endorsing Heartland Visas Pathway for Skilled Immigrants and Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Communities Facing Population Stagnation or Decline
Adopted at the 92nd Annual Meeting in 2024
WHEREAS, immigrant entrepreneurs have founded approximately 25 percent of recent startups in the U.S.; immigrants account for 30 percent of U.S. inventors; and immigrants have played an outsized role in American science and innovation, winning 38 percent of American Nobel prizes in medicine, chemistry, and physics since 2000; and
WHEREAS, high-skilled immigrants have been indispensable to recent U.S. advances in technology areas crucial to national security and ensuring our global economic leadership. Without the contributions of high-skilled immigrants, it is unlikely that the U.S. will successfully broaden and strengthen innovation ecosystems in regions across the country necessary to maintain our global leadership in science and technology in a rapidly changing world; and
WHEREAS, the current immigration system falls short by letting in too few skilled immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs and is heavily skewed towards a handful of major metropolitan areas; and
WHEREAS, numerous cities and localities across the United States outside of the traditional immigration hubs would welcome additional skilled immigrants to fuel economic growth and dynamism; and
WHEREAS, immigration is often the difference between population loss and population growth for U.S. cities; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. population growth in the 2010s was among the slowest of any decade in the nation's history; and
WHEREAS, many cities have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels of population growth; and
WHEREAS, whereas approximately 1,000 counties across the country are 10 percent or more below their prior peak populations; and
WHEREAS, population loss harms housing markets, depressing home values and increasing vacancies and blight; and
WHEREAS, population loss erodes the health of municipal finances, shrinking tax bases and undermining mayors' abilities to build and maintain infrastructure, invest in education and human services, and implement economic development programs; and
WHEREAS, population loss saps cities of their economic dynamism, reducing entrepreneurship, accelerating business closures, and limiting access to opportunity; and
WHEREAS, skilled immigration helps to unlock the latent potential of communities and residents as local economies revitalize, job opportunities increase, productivity rises, and city services improve; and
WHEREAS, a more strategic federal immigration policy could bolster city economies by increasing demand for local goods and services, filling vacant homes and storefronts, strengthening municipal finances, increasing business formation, and boosting demand for local workers; and
WHEREAS, a large majority of American voters from across the political spectrum are united in support of increasing skilled immigration to the United States as a way to promote economic growth, new business formation, and job creation for American workers; and
WHEREAS,mayors around the country already see welcoming immigrants as a key component of their economic development strategies,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that The United States Conference of Mayors calls on federal policymakers to increase efforts to help cities confront their economic development and demographic challenges, and endorses the idea of a "heartland visa" that would provide a new pathway for skilled immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs who wish to settle in welcoming communities facing population stagnation or decline that would opt-in to such a policy if it aligns with their local economic development goals.