President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric played well to many in Rust Belt states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, helping knock down the Democrats' “Blue Wall” and providing the necessary electoral votes to win the 2016 election.
Yet while states with the nation's largest immigrant populations—California, Texas, Florida, Arizona—are often perceived to be most affected by federal immigration policies, the Midwest has a lot at stake, and not necessarily in ways anticipated by the region's voters.
Ours are communities that for years have hemorrhaged population to the Sun Belt and other parts of the country. But as an earlier post in this series demonstrates, legal immigrants have kept coming to the Midwest.
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