Struggling Dayton opens arms to immigrants

City pins hopes for recovery on new blood, ideas

October 25, 2011|By Dan Sewell, Associated Press

Marta Guzman (right), owner of Taqueria Mixteca, is running the type of… (Al Behrman/Associated…)

DAYTON, Ohio - On the same afternoon thousands of Hispanics in Alabama took the day off to protest the state’s strict new immigration law, Mexican-born Francisco Mejia was ringing up diners’ bills and handing containers piled with carnitas to drive-through customers on the east side of Dayton.

His family’s Taqueria Mixteca is thriving on a street pockmarked with rundown buildings and vacant storefronts. It gets packed with a diverse lunchtime clientele of Hispanic laborers, white men in suits, and other customers, white and black. “Business is very good,’’ Mejia said, smiling broadly between orders.

It’s the kind of success story that leaders in Dayton think offers hope for an entire city. It has adopted a plan not only to encourage immigrants to come and feel welcome here, but also to use them to help pull out of an economic tailspin.

Dayton officials, who adopted the “Welcome Dayton’’ plan unanimously Oct. 5, say they aren’t condoning illegal immigration; those who come here illicitly will continue to be subject to United States laws.

While states including Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia, as well as some cities, have passed laws in recent years cracking down on illegal immigrants, Dayton officials say they will leave that to federal authorities and focus instead on how to attract and assimilate those who come legally.

Other cities, including nearby Columbus and Indianapolis, have programs to help immigrants get government and community help, but Dayton’s effort has a broader, and more urgent, feel.

Mayor Gary Leitzell told the city commission before the vote that immigrants bring “new ideas, new perspectives, and new talent to our workforce… . To reverse the decades-long trend of economic decline in this city, we need to think globally.’’

Hard-hit for years by the struggles of US manufacturing, particularly in the auto industry, the recession pounded Dayton, which as the Wright Brother’s hometown calls itself “the birthplace of aviation.’’

Thousands of jobs were lost with the crippling 2009 exodus to Georgia of NCR (formerly National Cash Register), one of Dayton’s signature corporations, after 125 years, and by the 2008 shutdown of a General Motors plant in suburban Moraine.

Dayton’s unemployment is nearly 11 percent, 2 percent higher than the national average, while population has fallen below 142,000, down 15 percent from 2000.

Meanwhile, the city’s official foreign-born population rose 57 percent, to 5,102, from 2000 to 2010, according to census figures.