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The American City With a Message for Migrants: We Want You
Kansas capital hopes to lure migrants with work authorization to fill some of its thousands of open jobs
TOPEKA, Kan.— While many American cities are struggling with large numbers of newly arrived migrants, Topeka is inviting anyone and everyone with permission to work in the U.S. to come its way.
Like a lot of smaller cities, the Kansas capital is grappling with near-stagnant population growth and an unemployment rate well below the national average, according to city and economic-development officials. Finding people to fill its roughly 6,600 open jobs has been a struggle, they say.
The Greater Topeka Partnership, an economic-development group, has been trying to sell people on the city with its “Choose Topeka” marketing campaign, which it started in 2019. Last year, it decided to direct those efforts toward immigrants, especially those from Spanish-speaking countries.
In some other cities led by Democrats, including New York, Chicago and Denver, concerns have grown about the number of incoming migrants and their strain on resources. Migrants have been arriving by the thousands, many bused from the border by Texas state authorities.
For Topeka Mayor Michael Padilla, a Democrat in a largely Republican state, the effort to attract immigrants along with Americans living in other cities just made sense.
“We know that for our community to prosper we have to have a diverse community,” said Padilla, who is in his first term. “We have to have people here who are willing to work and make this the city they want to raise a family in, get a career in.”
Padilla said Topeka doesn’t have the resources, including a migrant shelter, to manage even a fraction of the volume of people arriving in other cities. Instead, he said, he is happy to see his city’s population grow by encouraging foreigners with permission to work to move there.
Padilla, who describes himself politically as a cross between a conservative Democrat and a liberal Republican, and others said there has been little pushback on the effort.
The initial marketing push to immigrants included printing welcome and moving guides in Spanish. The campaign took off in the fall when Telemundo ran a segment on the effort and the benefits of moving to Topeka. TikTok videos about the segment have racked up thousands of views and likes.
Since the news story in Spanish-language media was published, the Greater Topeka Partnership has received nearly 10,000 résumés of people looking for job-placement help to move to the region.
The partnership started the broader “Choose Topeka” campaign in 2019 to recruit workers to move to the city, in some cases offering up to $15,000 a person to help with relocation costs.
The Spanish-language marketing effort so far has cost about $50,000, roughly 10% of the tourism office’s marketing budget, said Sean Dixon, president of Visit Topeka and senior vice president of the Greater Topeka Partnership.
Separately, a refugee-aid group is working in Topeka to help Ukrainians find sponsors so they also can move to the U.S. under the Biden administration’s Uniting for Ukraine program. Yana Ross, founder and president of the aid group—Top City Promise—said it has helped resettle more than 160 Ukrainians in the city.
Greater Topeka officials said the city’s growing Hispanic population played a role in its decision to court Spanish-speaking immigrants. About 17% of the city of about 126,000 is Hispanic, and that share has grown about 25% over the last decade while the overall population has grown by just over 1%, according to population data tracked by the Greater Topeka Partnership.
“Knowing that we have a decent sized Hispanic population here already, and that we have welcomed that community and it is part of our fabric, it seemed like a natural fit,” said Molly Howey, president of Go Topeka, which oversees the Greater Topeka Partnership and Choose Topeka program.
In east and north Topeka, Mexican restaurants and bakeries dot the boulevards. A pair of new Hispanic grocery stores has gone up in recent years, all signs that the community is growing and thriving, city and business development officials said.
Citywide, the effort appears to be largely welcomed, including in the existing business community.
Jay Ives, one of three owners of the Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant in Topeka, said he supports any effort to lure new residents. His business, he said, has about six to eight openings among a staff of about 80, and is constantly in search of new hires.
“We’ve got empty jobs here in Topeka, so bringing people to fill them is how we grow,” the Topeka native said as he sipped one of his brewery’s beers on a recent weeknight.
Javier Almeida, a native of Venezuela who migrated to the U.S. about a dozen years ago, has been running a small Venezuelan restaurant in Cincinnati for a decade and is looking at opening a second in Topeka.
“We’ve had a really good reception for our food from Americans in Cincinnati. We’re a small business and we don’t want to go to a big city like New York or Chicago,” Almeida said of his choice to expand in Topeka. “Right now, we think there is a really good opportunity to build a small business in Topeka.”
Howey said officials are likely to have specific data about the economic impact of the effort later this year, when statewide demographic survey data is released.
While Topeka is making a pitch to immigrants who can work in the U.S., word that the city is a welcoming place also has reached those lacking both permanent status and work authorization.
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Eduardo Gutierrez and his wife, Lizeth Bejarano, from Colombia, arrived in the U.S. last summer on tourist visas with their 9-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. The family, whom Gutierrez said plan to apply for asylum, settled in Topeka after a friend talked up the city.
“The cost to live here is low and it’s not a big city,” Gutierrez said. “We were looking for someplace calm and quiet. The change in climate has been extreme, but so far we like it.”
Bejarano said she and her husband both had white-collar jobs in Colombia, he in finance for a municipal transit company and she at a workplace-safety agency. The couple said they left because it became too dangerous to live in Colombia. So far, Topeka has lived up to its descriptions as a safe and welcoming community.
The Topeka Public Schools have also been helpful in directing their daughter, Valeria, to an English language program, the couple said.
Districtwide about 10% of students are English learners, with the top foreign languages being Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian, said Pilar Mejía, Topeka Public Schools’ director of cultural innovation.
Gutierrez’s family, along with his brother’s, share the first floor of a two-story duplex, and all four adults are enrolling in free English-language classes at the local library. For now they are doing their best to get by on savings and whatever day work they can find and hope to win permission to work after applying for asylum.
“We’re working on getting our papers in order, but other than that, it’s been great,” Bejarano said.
Write to Alicia A. Caldwell at alicia.caldwell@wsj.com
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