Beth Casella’s family has been making things out of metal in Dayton, Ohio, for more than half a century.
FC Industries — the company started by her grandfather, Frank — has grown into an $85 million local manufacturing business, churning out everything from high-tech centrifuges to La-Z-Boy recliner frames.
“We’re growing,” Casella says. “We keep breaking records, month after month.”
Finding workers to sustain that growth has not been easy, especially since the pandemic, in a city where the unemployment rate is just 5%. Casella has relied in part on immigrants, who now make up about 10% of FC Industries’ 300-plus-person workforce.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being very diverse,” Casella says. “Three of my grandparents were immigrants.”
The company has partnered with a local refugee resettlement agency to help recruit workers. Bilingual employees are paid extra to act as translators, and the company is setting up an English class. It’s not altruism, Casella says. Just good business.
“We want good workers,” she says. “We want people who can grow here and grow us to the next level. And we’re open to looking wherever that could be.”
It’s not just Casella’s company. Nationwide, immigrants are a vital force in powering the American job machine and keeping the U.S. economy humming. Over the last 12 months, nearly 1.5 million foreign-born workers have joined the labor force — legally or illegally. In the same period the population of U.S.-born workers has shrunk.
Loading…
The broader data shows that immigrants are not displacing native workers, but rather filling a hole that’s been created by retiring baby boomers. Were it not for immigration, job growth likely would have stalled. And that’s doubly true in places like Dayton — an aging industrial city with a population that’s half the size it was in 1960.
Dayton rolls out the welcome mat for immigrants
While nearby Springfield, Ohio, has become a lightning rod in the national debate over immigration, Dayton has been working for more than a decade to lure more immigrants, to help fill jobs and revitalize old neighborhoods. Dayton dubs itself an “immigrant friendly city” and launched a program in 2011 to make services more accessible to newcomers and integrate them into the local community.
“Our goal is to make Dayton a welcoming place for everybody,” says City Commissioner Matt Joseph, who helped spearhead the “Welcome Dayton” initiative.
Joseph, who has business cards printed in Spanish, Mandarin and Croatian, says there was some pushback, but not much.
“Most of the people who complained about it came from out of town,” he recalls. “Sometimes out of state. Like, they would drive hours to come to our meeting to complain about it. But native Daytonians didn’t, which I was really proud of.”
In a survey last year, 57% of Dayton residents said they’d be happy to have an immigrant family next door. That’s down from 70% three years ago. City officials suspect hostile rhetoric from national politicians is partly to blame for the decline.
One immigrant’s journey from Payless Shoes to trucking company owner
Some of the new arrivals have started their own businesses, like Moh Fardeen Ahmadi, who moved to Dayton from Afghanistan, where he’d worked as a translator for the U.S. military.
When he arrived a decade ago, Ahmadi spent a year working at Payless Shoes, then got a job as a truck driver. Eventually, he started his own trucking company with Afghan, Arab, Latino and U.S.-born employees.
“I started with one truck,” Ahmadi says. “I have nine trucks now. I have a total of 10 drivers. And I have three dispatchers. And I have a guy working in my office too.”
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan three years ago, more than 100 other Afghans have settled in Dayton. Ahmadi calls it a second chance to rebuild their lives.
Now available in a Dayton store: Cassava flour and smoked fish from Tanzania
Anita Nzigiye grew up in Rwanda and followed her sister to Dayton. After working for a time as a home health aide, she opened a market with her family, selling east African groceries to the growing community of African transplants.
“It’s basically food from home,” Nzigiye says of popular items such as smoked fish from Tanzania and specialty flours made from cassava and yams.
Nzigiye used to rarely see African immigrants in Dayton but says more are arriving every week, building a customer base for her store and a built-in welcoming committee for new arrivals.
“The housing is affordable,” Nzigiye says. “Even if their English may not be their first language, they can still find a job.”
Dayton’s lure: Low cost of living and abundant jobs
Those are the same qualities that drew waves of European immigrants and Black workers from the South to Dayton in the last century.
“My parents owned Evans Bakery right across the street,” says Dayton native Jennifer Evans. “I grew up there. Went to the local Catholic school here in the neighborhood.”
Today, Evans and her husband, Matt Tepper, are active in the Old North Dayton Neighborhood Association. The arrival of new immigrants has given a welcome boost to the aging community.
“Families were buying these abandoned houses and fixing them up immediately, occupying them,” Tepper says. “So Old North Dayton doesn’t have the — quote — abandonment problem that a lot of urban areas had.”
Friday worshippers share a parking lot with happy hour revelers
A group of ethnic Turks from Russia and Ukraine converted an old funeral home into a mosque. It shares a parking lot with the Polish social club next door. Luckily, the growing crowd at Friday prayers typically clears out just as happy hour at the social club is getting underway.
That friendly co-existence between new and old residents is a stark contrast with the ominous picture of immigrants that former President Donald Trump and his running-mate JD Vance like to paint.
To be sure, many Americans from across the political spectrum would like to see changes in national immigration policy. Evans says she would too. But however people make their way to Dayton, she tries to make them feel welcome, and thinks most of her neighbors feel the same way.
“I’d be lying if I said there was never anybody that said, ‘I don’t want all these new people in my neighborhood,'” Evans says. “I’m sure there are still some people here that would prefer it to be the way it was 60 years ago. But it just isn’t. For the most part, we’re all working together to make us all stronger.”
The city’s Welcome Dayton office has three full-time staffers who spend part of their time mediating between immigrants and longtime residents to prevent small conflicts from spiraling into something bigger. Recent cases involved people parking their car on the grass instead of the driveway and drying their clothes on the bushes. A quiet conversation in the right language can make a big difference.
“When those small things become a huge monumental mountain, Welcome Dayton has been instrumental in putting them back to mole-sized hills,” Tepper says.
In this elementary school, 40% of students speak a native language other than English
The foreign-born population in Dayton, like Ohio as a whole, is still relatively small — about 5%, compared to a national average of nearly 14%. But Dayton’s immigrant community has grown large enough to be noticeable in some areas.
At Kiser Elementary School, for example, 40% of students now speak a native language other than English. Instructions on the walls are printed in Spanish, Turkish and the central African language of Kinyarwanda.
City Commissioner Joseph acknowledges there are costs associated with providing services to the new arrivals, and he wishes his city had more control over things like work permits.
On the whole, though, Joseph says Dayton has prospered by reaching out to immigrants rather than turning them away.
“This is the best the city has done in 50 years — since before I was born,” Joseph says. And welcoming immigrants, welcoming everyone, has played a role in that.”
Transcript:
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Springfield, Ohio, has gotten a lot of unwelcome attention in recent weeks over immigration. Just 30 minutes west of Springfield, though, the city of Dayton, Ohio, has a very different story to tell. For more than a decade, Dayton has been actively encouraging immigrants to settle there to help fill vacant jobs and revitalize old neighborhoods. NPR’s Scott Horsley traveled to Dayton and has this report.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Beth Casella’s family has been making things out of metal in Dayton for more than half a century.
BETH CASELLA: This is my grandfather, and he founded this company, and this is his old toolbox. He was a toolmaker.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
HORSLEY: Today, FC Industries has grown into an $85 million manufacturing business, making everything from high-tech centrifuges to La-Z-Boy chair frames and auto exhaust pipes.
CASELLA: We’re growing. We keep breaking records month after month.
HORSLEY: Finding workers to maintain that growth hasn’t been easy in a city with just 5% unemployment. One place Casella has been looking is in Dayton’s growing immigrant community. About 10% of the company’s 300-plus employees are foreign-born. Bilingual workers get paid extra, act as translators, and the company is setting up an English class. Casella says it’s not altruism, just good business.
CASELLA: We want good workers, and we want people who can grow here and grow us to the next level. And we’re open to looking wherever that could be.
HORSLEY: Nationwide, immigrants are vital to keeping the U.S. economy growing. Over the last 12 months, more than 1 1/2 million foreign-born workers have joined the labor force, legally or illegally, while the population of U.S.-born workers has shrunk. It’s not that immigrants are displacing native workers; they’re filling a hole created by retiring baby boomers. Were it not for these new arrivals, U.S. job growth likely would have stalled. And that’s doubly true in places like Dayton, an aging industrial city that was losing people for decades.
MATT JOSEPH: Our goal is to make Dayton a welcoming place for everybody, where everybody can grow up, everybody can get a good job, everybody can live happily.
HORSLEY: Matt Joseph is a Dayton city commissioner who helped launch an effort back in 2011 to make city services more accessible to immigrants, and otherwise create a more inviting atmosphere. Joseph, who has business cards printed in Spanish, Mandarin and Croatian, says there was some pushback but not much.
JOSEPH: Most of the people that complained about it came from out of town, sometimes out of state. Like, they would drive hours to come to our meeting and complain about it, but native Daytonians didn’t, which I was really proud of.
HORSLEY: In a survey last year, 57% of Dayton residents said they’d be happy to have an immigrant family next door. That was down from 70% three years ago. City officials suspect hostile rhetoric from national politicians is partly to blame for the decrease.
Some of the immigrants who’ve settled in Dayton have started their own businesses, like Moh Fardeen Ahmadi. He moved here from Afghanistan, where he’d worked as a translator for the U.S. military. When he first arrived in Dayton 10 years ago, Ahmadi worked at Payless Shoes, then got a job as a truck driver. Eventually, he started his own trucking company, with Afghan, Arab, Latino and U.S.-born employees.
MOH FARDEEN AHMADI: And I started with one truck. I have nine trucks now. I have total of 10 drivers. And I have three dispatchers, and I have a guy working in my office, too.
HORSLEY: Since the Taliban’s takeover three years ago, more than 100 other Afghans have settled in Dayton. Ahmadi calls it a second chance to rebuild their lives.
Anita Nzigiye grew up in Rwanda and followed her sister to Dayton. After working for a time as a home health aide, she and her family opened up a market, selling East African groceries like smoked fish and flour made from cassava and yams.
ANITA NZIGIYE: It’s basically food from home. That’s what is more important with our store.
HORSLEY: Nzigiye pauses to ring up a customer who’s buying some imported soda pop.
NZIGIYE: The soda from my country, we call them Fanta Citron, so they come direct from Rwanda. And my people love it.
UNIDENTIFIED CUSTOMER: Yeah, I love it.
NZIGIYE: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF GLASS BOTTLES CLINKING)
HORSLEY: Nzigiye says when she first got to Dayton, it was rare to see another African immigrant, but nowadays, there’s a sizeable community, which supports her store and makes it easier for newcomers to find their way around.
NZIGIYE: The housing, the affordable apartments are affordable, so that’s why I think we have so many people in Dayton, Ohio. Even if the English may not be their first language, they still can find the job.
HORSLEY: Those same qualities, abundant jobs and a low cost of living, drew waves of European immigrants and Black workers from the South to Dayton in the last century. Jennifer Evans is a Dayton native.
JENNIFER EVANS: My parents owned Evans Bakery, right across the street. I grew up there, went to the local Catholic school here in the neighborhood.
HORSLEY: Evans’ husband, Matt Tepper, heads the Old North Dayton Neighborhood Association. He says the arrival of new immigrants has given a welcome boost to his aging community.
MATT TEPPER: Families were buying up those abandoned houses and fixing them up immediately, occupying them. So Old North Dayton doesn’t have the, quote, “abandonment problem” that a lot of urban areas had.
HORSLEY: A group of ethnic Turks from Russia and Ukraine converted an old funeral home into a mosque. It shares a parking lot with the Polish social club next door. Luckily, the growing crowd at Friday prayers typically clears out just as happy hour at the social club is getting underway. This friendly coexistence between new and old residents is a stark contrast with the ominous picture of immigrants that former President Trump and his running mate JD Vance like to paint. To be sure, many Americans would like to see changes made in national immigration policy. Jennifer Evans says she would too. But no matter how people got to Dayton, Evans tries to make them feel welcome and thinks most of her neighbors do too.
EVANS: I’d be lying if I said there was never anybody that said, I don’t want all these new people in my neighborhood. I’m sure there are still some people here that would prefer it be the way it was 60 years ago, but it just isn’t. For the most part, we’re all working together to make us all stronger.
HORSLEY: The city’s Welcome Dayton office has three full-time staffers who spend part of their time mediating between immigrants and long-time residents so small conflicts don’t spiral into something bigger. Maybe someone’s parking their car on the grass rather than the driveway or drying their clothes on the bushes. Matt Tepper says a quiet conversation in the right language can make a big difference.
TEPPER: Somebody calls me about – my neighbor just has trash everywhere – and they just didn’t understand that the blue ones were for recyclables and the green ones were for trash. So those problems disappear immediately.
HORSLEY: Foreign-born residents are still a smaller share of the population in Dayton and Ohio than they are nationwide, but Dayton’s immigrant community has grown big enough to be noticeable.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PARTY IN THE U.S.A.”)
MILEY CYRUS: (Singing) And a Britney song was on.
HORSLEY: At Kiser Elementary School, 40% of the students now speak a native language other than English. Instructions on the walls are printed in Spanish, Turkish and the central African language of Kinyarwanda. At a recent back-to-school night, parents browsed tables staffed by local service organizations, while kids munched on hot dogs and scrambled through inflatable bouncy houses.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PARTY IN THE U.S.A.”)
CYRUS: (Singing) Yeah, it’s a party in the U.S.A.
HORSLEY: City Commissioner Joseph acknowledges there are costs associated with the new arrivals, and he wishes his city had more control over things like work permits. On the whole, though, Joseph says Dayton has prospered by reaching out to immigrants rather than turning them away.
JOSEPH: This is the best the city’s done in 50 years, since before I was born, and welcoming immigrants and welcoming everyone has played a role in that.
HORSLEY: It’s an important reminder in a country where the economy increasingly depends on immigrants, even if politicians don’t always welcome them. Scott Horsley, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILEY CYRUS SONG, “PARTY IN THE U.S.A.”)
