Saving Main Street

Seeking new work opportunities, immigrants flocked to Pennsylvania’s resurgent economy in the 2000s.

The towns around Scranton, Pennsylvania once depended on coal. Coal mining in the region, which includes the towns of Tunkhannock and Old Forge, began declining in the late 1950s. There wasn’t much left by the late 1970s. People and businesses fled these towns until help arrived in the 1990s. Owing to the area’s proximity to Interstate 80 and the cities of New York and Philadelphia, AutoZone, Hershey and other distribution centers moved there. Amazon opened a huge warehouse, and Cargill a meat production and slaughtering plant.

This new economy delivered thousands of jobs that paid poorly but restored the region and its towns. Main Street bustled with independent shops, as the national chains set up operations on the towns’ fringes. Jobs attracted immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, who joined the established – and sometimes hostile – Italians, Irish and Poles, whose parents and grandparents made similar journeys decades before.

Even before COVID-19, small ...