On two recent episodes of popular radio show and podcast This American Life, hosts Ira Glass and Miki Meek explored a demographic shift in Albertville, Alabama, a rural city that experienced a huge influx of migrant workers from Mexico in the 1990s and early 2000s. The hosts reached out to my colleague Kim Rueben for help understanding how much the newcomers might have cost Albertville’s local population.

We investigated the potential costs and benefits of this complicated issue by examining how much of a financial burden the wave of immigrants may have placed on the publicly funded K–12 education system and whether the population increased enrollment in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp program.

Although not included in the final This American Life story, we also investigated what happened to property values and taxes in Albertville compared with neighboring cities and the state as a whole. This project offered a unique opportunity for us to delve deeper into the specifics of a city, digging beyond previous national and state estimates.

This brought our analysis to the household level. We could see the ways household tax bills increased to pay for a recent renovation at the local high school, and we saw SNAP enrollment increase during the 2008 recession. Moreover, after running the numbers and providing the objective, evidence-based analysis that Urban is known for, it was rewarding to see skilled storytellers incorporate our work into a compelling narrative.

Read the source article by Erin Huffer about immigrants from  Urban Institute