On Tuesday, an “Economic Impact of Immigration by State” report by WalletHub ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine which states benefit the most from immigrants and which ones benefit the least. As you might expect, the list won’t surprise many. Here are the top 10 and bottom 10 lists:
| States Where Immigrants Have Biggest Economic Impact | States Where Immigrants Have Smallest Economic Impact | ||||
| 1 | New York | 42 | Arkansas | ||
| 2 | California | 43 | Maine | ||
| 3 | New Jersey | 44 | Tennessee | ||
| 4 | Massachusetts | 45 | South Carolina | ||
| 5 | Delaware | 46 | Louisiana | ||
| 6 | District of Columbia | 47 | Idaho | ||
| 7 | Maryland | 48 | South Dakota | ||
| 8 | Illinois | 49 | Montana | ||
| 9 | Connecticut | 50 | Wyoming | ||
| 10 | Washington | 51 | Mississippi | ||
Like we said, not many surprises—the top 10 list voted for Democrats in the 2016 presidential election, and the bottom 10 list went GOP (except for the Maine split).
The study used comparisons across 19 key metrics, including median household income of foreign-born population to jobs generated by immigrant-owned businesses as a share of total jobs.
Some other nuggets from the study:
- California has the highest share of foreign-born residents, 27.00 percent, which is 17.2 times higher than in West Virginia, the lowest at 1.57 percent.
- Maryland has the highest median household income for the foreign-born population, $72,916, which is 2.1 times higher than in New Mexico, the lowest at $34,220.
- New Mexico has the highest homeownership rate for the foreign-born population, 63.4 percent, which is 1.9 times higher than in North Dakota, the lowest at 33.3 percent.
- New Jersey has the highest share of foreign-born STEM workers, 43.8 percent, 54.8 times higher than in Wyoming, which has the lowest at 0.8 percent.
- The District of Columbia has the highest share of direct and indirect jobs created by the economic contributions of international students, 1.65 percent, which is 82.5 times higher than in Alaska, the lowest at 0.02 percent.
And WalletHub also added a map to check out the rankings:
