The Government Researched How To ‘Increase Demographic Diversity’ In Rural America Through Immigration

A put its demographic ambitions in writing. The long-term goal of its Welcoming Communities initiative was to build a system that would:

“support immigration and in-migration to southern Vermont and an increase in demographic diversity.”

That language appeared in an April 7, 2021 announcement bylined Alex Beck⁠, then the initiative’s coordinator at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation, or BDCC...

...The organization is a private nonprofit serving as a state-certified regional development corporation. ...

...Increasing demographic diversity was an explicit objective of an initiative supported with public money....

“serving as a model for rural refugee resettlement across the United States.”

The university identified an aging population and workforce shortages as the challenges the partnership sought to address. Its partners included BDCC, the Ethiopian Community Development Council of Vermont, the School for International Training and UVM geography professor Pablo Bose.

The institute awarding the money has federal backing. According to UVM’s funding explanation⁠, the Leahy Institute is supported by a four-year, $14 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture. That grant supports the institute and its grantmaking across multiple subjects; the resettlement project’s listed award was $250,000.....

...Taken together, the documents show publicly supported institutions treating immigration and demographic change as tools of rural economic policy—and researching how a resettlement model could be adopted elsewhere.

Federal officials also promoted southern Vermont’s approach directly.

In a June 18, 2024 letter to higher-education leaders⁠, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona encouraged colleges to expand their involvement in refugee resettlement, including using available campus facilities for temporary housing.

... They singled out the School for International Training in Brattleboro. According to the letter, the school had opened seven residence halls, classrooms and other facilities to welcome, house and educate more than 300 newly arrived refugees since 2022.

The economic-development partners were also reporting measurable results.

A May 2025 Working Communities Challenge report⁠ reported more than 400 newcomers welcomed to southern Vermont and more than 165 refugees placed in jobs with 52 employers. It identified the challenge as a partnership involving Vermont, philanthropic organizations, communities and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

. One beneficiary was Against the Grain Gourmet, a Brattleboro food producer. The report said workforce programs helped the company bring on 30 newcomers in 2024, and that full staffing helped it increase production by 22%.

Those are the partners’ reported benefits. The university’s research also identified practical limits.

In a November 2025 update⁠, UVM said researchers had interviewed more than 50 refugee households and over 30 volunteers and sponsors. Refugees generally reported positive experiences and success finding initial work and housing, alongside difficulties with transportation, longer-term housing, educational access and jobs that matched their qualifications.

Any effort to export this model should account for those constraints. Residents deserve clear figures on housing capacity, public costs, employer benefits and the services needed to support both existing households and new arrivals.

The demographic objective is already explicit. So is the ambition to develop a national model.

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