“AMERICA has always been conflicted about immigration,” says Anna Crosslin, head of the International Institute of St Louis, which sponsors refugees and helps them after they arrive. In the 1840s brawls erupted in St Louis when Germans took against the Irish newcomers. The same happened when the first Italians came to a town then considered the gateway to the West. In the late 20th century the influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants created a familiar tension.

It was no different when thousands of Bosnian refugees fleeing civil war in the former Yugoslavia were settled in St Louis in the 1990s. The city and its previous waves of immigrants were fearful and even resentful of the newcomers, who were almost all Muslims. When some built smokehouses in their backyards and spit-roasted a whole lamb, the International Institute received phone calls from locals telling them that the Bosnians were barbecuing the local dogs.

The fear and suspicion lasted for two or three years, during which the new arrivals rebuilt their lives at sometimes astonishing speed. Ibrahim Vajzovic came to St Louis in 1994, aged 35, with his wife and three children. Within six weeks he had an entry-level job at a printing plant, and he quickly advanced to warehouse manager. In 1999 he enrolled at graduate school and earned a PhD. Today he owns three businesses and teaches at Webster University. His son is an engineer; one daughter is a lawyer at a well-known firm in Chicago, and his other daughter is at Harvard Law School. “We made big sacrifices,” admits Mr Vajzovic. His biggest problem when he arrived was his inability to speak English.

Thanks to the industrious Bosnians, an entire neighbourhood in southern St Louis, Bevo Mill, was transformed from a crime-ridden area pockmarked by abandoned buildings into a decent quarter with small shops and restaurants with vowel-poor names: Stari Grad, Grbic. Today more than 50,000 Bosnian refugees and their children live in the St Louis area. They have built two mosques and set up a chamber of commerce. Their community has lower crime and unemployment rates than among the general population. And they are better off: Jack Strauss of St Louis University has found that immigrants in the area, many of them Bosnians, earn on average $83,000 a year, or 25% more than those who were born in America. They are more inclined to start a business, three times more likely to be skilled rather than unskilled and much more likely to have an advanced degree. In general, immigrants are also less likely than the native-born to receive food stamps or cash assistance from the government. Mr Strauss concludes that St Louis now would be doing much better, compared with other big cities, if it had attracted more immigrants. (The immigrant population makes up 4.5% of the total; in Chicago it is 21%.)

Like many cities in the Midwest, St Louis suffered from the decline of manufacturing and the consequent flight of residents to the suburbs. In the census of 1950, 856,796 residents were recorded, making it one of the largest cities in the country. By 2010 only 319,294 people lived there. This is one of the reasons why Francis Slay, the mayor of St Louis, has not budged from his call to welcome Syrian refugees to his city, in spite of the backlash after the terrorist attacks in Paris and California. Leaders of the local Bosnian community would like to see more Syrians in St Louis; so far this year, a mere 29 have been resettled there.

At Bosna Gold, business was slow at lunchtime on a sunny December day. Neither the employees nor the solitary diner spoke English. All attention was focused on the Bosnian soap opera on the television behind the bar. Bosna Gold is busier at night when men come to eat tripice (tripe), sarma (stuffed cabbage) and cevapi (sausage), drink, smoke and discuss sports (Bosnians have lifted the level of St Louis soccer). The older generation is homesick, torn between the beautiful life they have created here and the country they left behind, says Nedim Ramic, a lawyer.

Yet even amid success stories like St Louis, some evidence bolsters those who would rather keep Syrian refugees out. Earlier this year six Bosnian immigrants were charged with sending money and supplies to terrorists in Iraq and Syria. Three of them lived in St Louis County.