THERE IS NO growth without immigrants. Residents of American cities like Baltimore have forever been picking up and moving on; there's nothing new about that. But in years gone by they were always replaced, and then some, by newcomers, from abroad or from the farm.
In Baltimore, that flow of immigrants dried up a half century ago -- with completely predictable results. The city just keeps shrinking, losing wealth, clout and vitality. The only cities outside the Sunbelt that are gaining in population are doing so because of a renewed influx of foreign-born immigrants.
A new report prepared for the Abell Foundation by Bruce A. Morrison takes a hard look at why Baltimore has so few immigrants -- 5 percent of the population, just half the national average -- and what the city can do about it.
The most trenchant observation is that cities such as Minneapolis, Boston, Newark, N.J., and Oakland, Calif., attract immigrants without trying to. No city, in recent times, has ever decided to re-create itself as a goal for immigrants, and then gone about doing so. Can what is essentially an organic process -- characterized by networks of family and village origin, by ties of language and by a thousand personal decisions -- be consciously managed by city leaders? Mr. Morrison thinks it's possible.
It's no secret that immigrants like to cluster, and the striking thing about Maryland is that most recent immigrants have clustered in the suburbs. Russian speakers head for Baltimore County, Koreans for Howard County. They are drawn by housing, education, jobs -- but mostly, they are drawn by each other. Mr. Morrison believes Baltimore should focus on other groups -- specifically Africans, West Indians, Mexicans and Central Americans.
What could the city do? The Abell report offers these recommendations:
Pay more attention to existing immigrants, so that they feel welcome and spread the word back home.
Create an "immigrant employment task force," to fill both entry-level and high-skilled jobs.
Persuade the city's universities to admit more foreign students.
Persuade the city's business community to think in terms of hiring immigrants.
Prepare the schools for non-English speakers.
An immediate hurdle appears -- resentment or hostility among Baltimoreans themselves, many struggling as it is to make ends meet. The point, Mr. Morrison says, is not to push aside the locals, but to add new faces to stop the withering away of the city. It's a good argument, but a hard sell.
Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has said he believes immigrants may bring more problems with them than they can solve.
The experience of other American cities -- buoyed by the energy, creativity and just plain get-up-and-go of immigrants -- suggests otherwise.
We hope he'll take a long look at the Abell report, and, together with business and community leaders, find a way to act on it.