Traffic was so rare on the road in Lewiston, Maine, where David Chittim and his wife bought an old farmhouse in the late 1970s, that they’d jump to look out the window every time a car passed by.

The newlyweds, both 27, moved to the house because it was something they could afford and fix up themselves. But even though it was just a few miles from the city’s downtown, Chittim said they were “essentially isolated.”

“When we moved here …  it was a dirt road, (and) we knew all four people who lived on it,” he said.

Lewiston had been an industrial center for decades starting in the 1800s, thanks to the textile mills that lined the Androscoggin River. But by the 1970s, the mills were largely shut down. The downtown area had a rough reputation, so the young couple rarely ventured there. Instead, they spent most of their time at home, cutting firewood for heat in the winter and enjoying the nature that surrounded them.

Nearly 50 years later, times have changed – and the traffic on Chittim’s road is just one sign of it.

“Now, our road has 50 or 60 houses on it,” said Chittim, now 74-years-old.

A retired engineer, Chittim is part of one of northern New England’s most important demographics. He is an older adult in one of the oldest regions in the country.

Chittim has also witnessed the growth of another demographic that has helped bring life to his city: immigrants and refugees. Immigrants make up a small percentage of the population in northern New England. But they have contributed substantially to its recent growth, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Around the region, immigrants and refugees are filling gaps in the workforce left as the native-born population ages out of it – or leaves for opportunities elsewhere. And some communities, once manufacturing centers, are evolving as longtime residents and newer arrivals forge a path for the future.

About 200 miles west of Lewiston in Winooski, Vermont, textile mills once powered by the Winooski River have been closed for decades, and many families who had lived there for generations have left. But the city of just 1.5 square miles has become known as a destination for refugees arriving in the U.S.

“There just aren't a lot of people in my generation who stayed,” said Deac Decarreau, who’s lived in Winooski for all of her 65 years. “I really think that without realizing it, we’ve become increasingly dependent on refugee resettlement … for the last 15 years, maybe more.”

Such change is not always easy, even in places like Lewiston and Winooski, which became manufacturing centers in the mid-1800s by relying on the labor of immigrant workers.

In 2022, a report commissioned by Winooski officials concluded the city was “diverse but not inclusive” and stated that many “New Americans” feel excluded from the larger community. And Lewiston contended with rising tensions between some city leaders and the Somali community following a wave of arrivals in the early 2000s.

Still, some residents say the cities have ultimately benefitted from the change. In Lewiston, many of the city’s former mills have been converted into restaurants, offices, and museums.

And Chittim, president of the county’s historical society, said the seedy adult shops that once marked parts of downtown are now markets and stores owned by residents from Africa. He said he and his wife have become “enamored with Lewiston,” and they’ll never leave.

“We love the activity that a dynamic intermixing of cultures creates,” Chittim said. “There’s a tension there that helps people grow.”

How are immigrants impacting New England’s population and labor force growth?

New England is one of the oldest regions in the country, and the northern New England states have the three highest median ages in the country. Maine is the oldest state at 44.8, followed by New Hampshire and Vermont, both at 43.4.

Meanwhile, about 27% of all cities and towns in northern New England lost population between 1990 – 2017. That’s according to a brief by Boston Fed researcher Riley Sullivan, who is exploring the role of immigration in combating New England’s aging and declining populations.**

Sullivan said subtle shifts in census data show that people moving into New England are now more likely to be foreign-born. A 2023 brief Sullivan wrote on recent migration trends found that between 2010 – 2021: 

• The share of total population growth from foreign-born residents in New England was more than double the nation’s.
• Foreign-born residents make up less than 14% of the total population in New England, but they drove more than half of its growth.
• Immigrants made up 23% of New Hampshire’s population growth and 17% of Maine’s.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Vermont’s current foreign-born population at about 28,230 – more than an 18% increase since 2000, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Immigrants in the northern New England states also tend to be younger and have a higher workforce participation rate than native-born residents, Sullivan said. That’s important in older regions because workers tend to exit the labor force in their mid- to late-60s. If there’s no one to replace them, labor shortages can leave residents struggling to access important goods and services, such as health care or home repairs, he said.

“Immigrants occupy every sector in New England: the service sector, biotech, life sciences,” Sullivan said. “Our region’s growth is becoming increasingly impacted by foreign-born workers.”

Jess Maurer, who directs the Maine Council on Aging, said she doesn’t see immigration as the ultimate solution to the state’s workforce issues. She said it’s also critical to address the ageism that many older residents who want to continue working regularly face.

“We've been working on employment discrimination for more than a decade,” she said. “For the first time, we've seen real growth in the number of people over the age of 65 who are employed.”

At the same time, Maurer said, Maine still needs to welcome new residents – whether they’re from another state or another country. It also needs to have policies in place that help people find work that matches their skills.

“What we do in this area matters because we're competing with every other state in the country for immigrants … (and) younger people who are deciding where they're going to live and raise their families,” she said. 

Changing a devastating narrative

Retired Bates College professor Leslie Hill said the common narrative that Maine is older and unproductive is devastating for the state. Hill moved to Lewiston to work at Bates in the 1980s. Like her hometown of Detroit, Lewiston had been hit hard by the decline of industrial manufacturing. But she said people have been working for years to promote economic recovery in the city, and welcoming immigrants and refugees is part of that.

“The presence of immigrants makes it possible to imagine a labor force for the kinds of industrial, technological, and maybe even health care industries that local leaders are imagining and trying to (bring) to the area,” she said.

Reminders of the historical importance of immigrants to Lewiston’s economy are on display at the Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor, which is housed in one of the city’s former mills. On a recent visit, Hill examined machinery used more than a century ago by Irish, French-Canadian, and Black workers, among others, to make textiles, shoes, and bricks.

But despite the city’s long history of immigration, some local leaders pushed back against an influx of African refugees that started around 2001. Immigration to the U.S. from Somalia had increased following a civil war there in the 1990s. Some refugees headed to nearby Portland, while other families found more housing opportunities in Lewiston, along with good schools and low crime rates.

In 2002, then-mayor Laurier T. Raymond, Jr., wrote an open letter to Somali leaders asking them to discourage their people from coming to Lewiston.

“We have been overwhelmed and have responded valiantly,” he wrote. “Now we need breathing room. Our city is maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally.”

The following year, a white supremacist group planned an anti-immigrant demonstration in Lewiston. But they were met by a larger counter-protest outside a National Guard building in the city. And Bates students also organized to counter negativity toward immigrants and refugees.

“They put on an event that said, ‘You're welcome here. We're glad to have you. We hope you find some relief from what you escaped,’” Hill recalled.

Abdikadir Negeye’s family was among those who arrived in Lewiston in the early 2000s. Negeye, 38, was born in Somalia but spent much of his childhood in Kenyan refugee camps. The family first lived in the U.S. in Atlanta, then moved to Maine when he was a teenager. Negeye said he was struck by how small Lewiston seemed, but he said it felt safe.

At first, Negeye said city hall was the only place his family knew to go to for help. But that’s changed drastically over 20 years. Now there are numerous networks to help new arrivals, including Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, which Negeye co-founded in 2008. This year, he’s expecting to help resettle 200 individuals from a variety of countries, including Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Congo.

A big part of Negeye’s work involves finding housing for families and helping them adjust to life in the U.S. But the organization also focuses on connecting with young people in Lewiston. Negeye said early career opportunities like internships are critical to keeping young people from all backgrounds in Maine. Many young adults can’t find work in their field once they return home after college, so they end up leaving again.

“I think it's time for us to invest in young people,” he said. “Maine is aging, and we want people to stay (here) after they graduate.”

As previous generations exit, families from across the world arrive

Like Lewiston, Winooski has relied on waves of immigrants settling in its corner of northwest Vermont to sustain its economy – including Irish and French-Canadian millworkers. On a recent summer day, lifelong resident Decarreau visited the renovated Champlain Mill in the city’s downtown, a former woolen mill by the Winooski Falls where her grandparents once worked.

“It was very much a working-class area when I was growing up,” Decarreau said. “Moms stayed home, and dads often worked two jobs to keep families fed. But it was a tight-knit community.”

Textile industry jobs in the century-old riverside city were mostly gone when Decarreau was younger, and many residents worked manufacturing jobs at a nearby IBM factory. The company later sold the factory and left Vermont for good in 2014.

Some manufacturing jobs still exist in the area, but Decarreau said most of the families who’d lived in Winooski for generations have left for college, better housing, or other opportunities. She said only one brother out of her four siblings still lives in Winooski, and that’s still “really rare.”

Years ago, she said there were enough kids within any two city blocks to put together a baseball team. There aren’t as many kids around now, but she said many of the families who do have multiple children are refugees, and that’s helping to sustain Winooski’s population.

“When you have a (city population) as low as 8,000, having, for example, even 15 new families with children matters,” she said.

Faridar Ko and her family arrived in Winooski in 2008 from a refugee camp in Thailand, where they fled following civil war in Myanmar. Winooski’s population was about 6,300 that year. But when Ko, then age 14, enrolled in the local high school, she found that there were already students from countries including Congo, Somalia, Iraq, and Nepal.

“I didn’t speak any English, so being in the classroom with a lot of students and a teacher who don’t speak your language was very challenging,” Ko said.

Now, Ko works in the Winooski school district as a “multilingual liaison” and provides the type of help she needed as a student. But this assistance often goes beyond translation, said Tul Niroula, who has worked as a school liaison for more than 10 years.

Niroula, who was born in Bhutan, spent more than 20 years in a refugee camp in Nepal before coming to Vermont in 2013. It wasn’t at all what he expected.

“I thought Vermont would be a noisy, busy place with tall buildings, like New York or Boston,” he said.

Niroula, a trained educator who started a school in his refugee camp, soon realized that families needed help outside of school hours. Even things that seem simple, like opening a bank account or understanding Vermont’s road system, were daunting at first. Those kinds of struggles were called out in Winooski’s 2022 Equity Audit.

“Because new arrivals lack the experience to navigate and access even the most basic services … their focus remains directed at solving basic issues, which reduces the available time to participate in and integrate with the community more broadly,” the audit read.

Resident: Emerging challenges must be examined “with new eyes”

Employment is also important to integration, and Niroula said his work includes helping families secure job opportunities.

“We sometimes visit homes and help parents with paperwork and job applications, resumes, and cover letters,” Niroula said.

The new arrivals have the benefit of being in high demand. Tracy Dolan – who directs the state’s refugee office – said she regularly hears from local companies looking for new employees in health care, manufacturing, commercial driving, and other fields.

“Employers are calling all the time, saying ‘Hey, we hear refugees are arriving. We would love to hire some people. We're really stuck,’” she said. “It’s a big deal.”

That need will only grow. Tracey Shamberger from Age Well VT, the state’s aging resource center, said population estimates show that one in three adults in the state will be 60 or older by 2030. She added that health care is seeing one of the state’s greatest workforce shortages, and that’s impacting people of all ages.

“There are so many older adults that we don't have the workforce to help support them staying in their homes,” she said. “So, caregiving is now falling to families, and that's a real issue.”

As residents face fallout from the region’s aging and population trends, leaders are searching for ways to blunt the impact. It seems that immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers are poised to keep playing an important role, but exactly how is the question.

Decarreau said she believes her state is at an “inflection point.”

“Our old solutions just aren't working anymore. … We can't do the next 50 years with the things that we've been doing for the last 50 years,” she said. “We have to think about almost everything we (do) with new eyes.”

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** Recent migration across the United States’ southern border is not captured in U.S. Census data or in other publicly available data sources. Research suggests immigration flows across the southern border may impact the nation’s labor force and economy. For additional information, see: Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy | Congressional Budget Office (cbo.gov).