Residents of Rutland, Vermont, from left, Elizabeth Hinterberger, Nan Dubin, Eszter Tóth and Bayan Alsairy, are learning Arabic to communicate with the 100 Syrian and Iraqi refugees who might move to their city soon.

RUTLAND, Vt. — They hustled into the church on a biting winter evening, unburdened themselves of scarves and gloves, and settled into pews to sound out words in Arabic.

“Ahlan fii Rutland,” said Fran Knapp, a retiree who lives about 20 minutes away, one of two or three dozen people who have attended a class here on rudimentary Arabic.

Welcome to Rutland.

It was one of many preparations this remote city in central Vermont is making before 100 refugees from Syria and Iraq arrive here over the next year, with the first expected to come this month.

The plan’s fiercest advocate has been the mayor of Rutland, Christopher Louras, who has cited not the moral argument for resettling refugees, but an economic one: This shrinking city, long removed from its heyday as a marble producer and regional railroad hub, needs every new resident it can get. Syrian refugees, he has said, are an opportunity.


“Rutland’s demographic condition right now is not just one of a declining population, but it’s also a graying population,” said Louras, who became the mayor about 10 years ago as a Republican, but has since become an independent. “We need people,” he added.

The plan, born in a time of national discord over Muslim immigration and criticism of Syrian refugees by President-elect Donald Trump, has divided the city: An opposition group, Rutland First, sprang up — as did Rutland Welcomes, to collect donated items, help the new arrivals and watch for job openings that might suit them.

Rutland, population 15,824, has lost residents since 2000. Some Rutlanders see refugee resettlement as a potential economic boon to their shrinking city, while others are concerned about whether they can absorb the newcomers.

But the preparations are unfolding under a cloud of uncertainty, because it is not yet clear whether Trump, as president, will make good on his campaign promise to suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States.

Immigration is part of the history of every American city. But experts say that in recent years, some towns and cities, reeling from shifts in the economy and declining populations, have focused anew on potential economic benefits from refugee resettlement, even as immigration has become a subject of partisan political battles.

“Over the last couple of decades, especially in the last 10 years, places have started to develop strategies to attract and retain immigrants and resettle refugees in order to boost their economic activity,” said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied refugee resettlement in U.S. cities.


Refugees are a small subset of immigrants, and many cities that have made a point of welcoming them say that they do so primarily for humanitarian, not economic, reasons. But as cities in the Rust Belt, like Pittsburgh and Dayton, Ohio, and in other parts of the country, like Maine and upstate New York, set up offices to connect immigrants and refugees with services and job opportunities, advocates say economic benefits have arisen as a result.

“We’ve seen a few neighborhoods kind of turn around because of immigrants and refugees moving in,” said Melissa Bertolo, the coordinator for one such support group, Welcome Dayton. She added that cities in the Rust Belt are “all looking at how immigrant integration plays a part in the revitalization of a city.”

That is what some are hoping for here in Rutland, as the state suffers from population stagnation, according to Art Woolf, an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont. The birthrate has declined and net migration has slowed, which Woolf ascribed to Americans’ increasing preference for cities and dense suburbs.

“I think we’re right on the beginning of the cusp of serious, serious labor problems,” said Woolf, who added that the state’s unemployment rate, at 3.6 percent, was a sign of more trouble to come. “We’re low because there’s nobody available to work.”

A resident in one of the Arabic-language classes, which are held at a local church.

Nowhere is that more pronounced, Woolf said, than Rutland County, here in the center of the state, which has lost residents since 2000. Rutland has 15,824 residents, according to an estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, which said the city had lost 4 percent of its population since 2010. The highest population for Rutland recorded by the Census Bureau was 19,293, in 1970.


It is a striking community, lately hobbled by isolation: There are mountains on the horizon, but the city is an hour from major highways. Its status as a railroad hub and a marble powerhouse is long gone, and recent decades have seen the loss of major factory employers.

“It hit a peak, it leveled off, and now we’re trying to find ourselves,” said Will Notte, 45, president of the Board of Selectmen and a fifth-generation Rutlander who supports the refugee proposal.

The city’s tiny downtown is making its way back from the recession and a fight against heroin; new bookstores, furniture stores and clothing boutiques have opened in recent years.

But city leaders are worried that population loss could make it harder for the remaining major employers, like General Electric plants that make parts for aircraft engines and the Rutland Regional Medical Center, to stay. They are putting $100,000 toward a $200,000 effort from local economic development groups to market the area and draw more residents.

Syrian refugees, business leaders say, could become an integral part of that effort, both by adding to the population — if only slightly — and bringing cultural diversity that they hope will attract younger residents.

The plan originated in fall 2015, when, after that November’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Trump and more than two dozen governors expressed opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. But Peter Shumlin, the departing Democratic governor, said Vermont would welcome Syrian refugees, and Louras texted the governor to see whether they could bring refugees to Rutland. The city was officially selected by the State Department as a resettlement site in September.

“I saw that as an opportunity to grow our population, bring in individuals, families, new Americans from Syria who have a strong work ethic, who were fleeing for their lives and looking to rebuild those shattered lives,” Louras said.

But the argument did not go down well among everyone in Rutland. One online petition referred to the refugees as “the same people who hate us.” Rutland First, the opposition group, emerged — using a Facebook page that has drawn vitriolic and obscene comments about refugees — with the goal of blocking or delaying the plan. During the summer, seven of Rutland’s 11 aldermen voted to approve a letter to the State Department saying they were not ready to support the plan.

Many members of Rutland First say that they are not biased or xenophobic, as their critics have said, but that they have economic concerns about whether the city can absorb the new arrivals.

“We’re kind of stuck out here, with our level of economic depression, with our level of crime and drug issues,” said Timothy Cook, a doctor and an Army Reserve colonel who gave Rutland First its name. “We’re the ones who are gonna have to foot the bill for this.”

A report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine found that between 2011 and 2013, first-generation immigrants cost states about $1,600 per person, but that second- and third-generation immigrants contributed $1,700 and $1,300 to state and local budgets.

And that is what business leaders in Rutland hope will happen here.

Resettlement, said Lyle Jepson, executive director of Rutland Economic Development Corp., is “supporting people when they need help.”

But, he added, “Frankly, we need help. We need people to join our community.”