Congress' inaction on immigration reform this year created a void that was soon filled by a groundswell of pressure for state leaders to act. Officials close to the issue in other states caution that it's important for Iowans to understand the state's real issues before deciding to act. So what are they?
The Register examines them in an ongoing report.
Two decades of growth in the state's Latino immigrant population - including the estimated 2.7 percent of the state's work force that is undocumented - have come with growing pains, Iowa economists and demographers say.
That growth has meant thousands more children to educate, greater medical costs to cover and depressed wages for native workers in some industries.
But it also has brought a burst of new economic vitality to withering communities around the state, experts say. Latinos represent a new generation of workers to take over where others have left or are dying, and legions of families to rent and buy homes, pay taxes, start businesses, and contribute to strapped programs like Social Security.
Iowa's limited growth from its native population places the state in a somewhat different position from other states as it approaches immigration issues, demographers say.
Immigrants, who have a higher birth rate, have accounted for the vast majority of the state's growth since 2000.
"Anybody who really knows how our economy works knows if we don't get new people in the state, we're in very serious trouble long-term," said Mark Grey, a University of Northern Iowa professor who runs the New Iowans Center. The center helps communities and businesses accommodate immigrant and refugee newcomers living and working in the state. "Our future economic health is clearly tied to our ability to accommodate these people."
Ernie Goss, an economist at Creighton University in Omaha, said that while new immigrants have affected wages, particularly among low-skilled workers and high school dropouts, their contributions have helped the state's economy expand overall. And the longer immigrants stay, the more they tend to contribute to the economy, a recent Pew Hispanic Center study found.
"Without that, you'd be in negative growth territory," he said.
Goss also said that without immigrant labor, especially in population-poor areas, it's likely Iowa businesses would move certain jobs out of state or out of the country.
State at crossroads in immigration growth
Across the country, the number of unauthorized immigrants over a two-year period dropped significantly - by about a million people - to 11.1 million in 2009. Iowa is estimated to have about 45,000 to 85,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to a study released in September by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Demographers once designated Iowa as one of 22 "new growth" states in the United States for new immigrants based on U.S. census numbers. But the state now stands at a crossroads in terms of future immigration growth.
Economic forecasters like Woods & Poole have predicted the number of Latinos in Iowa will more than double - to 384,320 - in a generation.
Sandra Burke, a demographer at Iowa State University's Community Vitality Center, thinks the current immigrant population may be on the lower end of the Pew estimates because jobs in construction and the service industry have waned in recent years, and fewer new immigrants have been entering the meatpacking and food-processing industries.
"The plants are already about as saturated with immigrant labor as they can get," she said. "You'll have turnover of workers, but you aren't going to see a huge increase like the '90s and 2000s."
She believes greater border enforcement and fewer jobs will translate into much slower growth.
"It will be interesting to see what the 2010 census shows," she said. "It wouldn't surprise me if the numbers are declining in Iowa. It's a standard rule of migration that people move to areas where they perceive they have economic opportunities."
David Swenson, an Iowa State University economist, said whole swaths of the state, particularly rural Iowa, are struggling to maintain economic vibrancy. Even before the recession began, population was migrating toward urban centers in the state.
And other states have a wider availability of professional jobs for young college graduates, he noted. College graduates in Iowa "are not leaving because they don't love us," he said. "They leave because we can't use them."
Immigrants, meanwhile, continue to fill a majority of jobs in meat and food processing.
"It would be pretty hard to prove across the board that Iowa is in worse shape because of immigrant labor," Swenson said. "The work they do here is still largely work that others don't want to do, or that we don't have enough workers to do."
Weighing costs, need for future workers
If Iowa followed the path of Arizona, which adopted the nation's toughest immigration enforcement law this spring, both Swenson and Burke believe the chilling effect would hurt the state economically.
Swenson said he believes businesses would suffer and local economies would shrink.
It's not a clean solution to try to open the door wide for legal immigrants but shut it tightly for illegal immigrants. While most immigrants are legal residents or citizens, others in their families are often at different stages of trying to become so.
Together, their impact ripples through communities like Columbus Junction, Denison, Des Moines, Marshalltown, Perry and Storm Lake. They buy cars, groceries and clothes. Their families fill local housing stock, and over time they support and build new business.
Carlos Rios, executive director of Many Voices One Community, a nonpartisan immigrant rights nonprofit in Des Moines' United Way complex, says many Iowans don't realize how much new business immigrants are bringing to the state. He said his group has helped establish more than 60 new businesses - in groceries, insurance and construction - in the past year, all of which pay taxes and rely on legal workers.
Several studies - including one in 2007 by the Iowa Policy Project - have found that an influx of new immigrants can tax local governments, but that they tend to benefit state and national coffers overall.
Demand for immigrant labor, especially in the Midwest, continues to outstrip the number of employment visas. A task force that examined national illegal immigration issues in Oklahoma concluded that the need for immigrant workers continues in spite of associated costs.
"States are looking at economic planning projections and realizing that, with the impending baby boomer retirement, there will be a need for both replacement workers and health care and other workers to service an increasingly large elderly population," the report said.