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The burden of supporting asylum-seekers with food and housing often falls to cities, . But Denver is piloting a new approach designed to integrate immigrants into the workforce faster.

The offers six months of rent-free housing along with legal assistance, food aid and workforce training. The program started on April 10, 2024, with spots for up to .

Only asylum-seekers who were already living in Denver when the program launched are eligible—a provision designed to control costs and discourage hopeful participants from coming to Denver. This is an important detail in a city that——has groaned under the financial strain of an influx of migrants since December 2022.

of the new program include expenditures on housing, food and training, which is predicted to cost around .

So is this expenditure worth it? One way to assess that is to look at an economist's tool set called a . I teach this tool set as a at . Such an analysis considers the broad benefits and costs of a program like Denver's compared with or "doing nothing."

A system under strain

in Denver reached a peak in early 2024, when 5,213 people arrived in just one day, leading the city to to help free up funds to provide food and housing.

Many of the migrants arrived from the Mexico border, put on because of Denver's status as a sanctuary city. Denver has seen , more than , but the numbers have fallen significantly in recent weeks.

The new Denver Asylum Seekers Program was designed to control costs by serving a limited number of asylum-seekers while assisting others with ," as the city describes it, after staying just in temporary housing. Previously, the city had offered .

The program allowed Denver to trim $15 million per quarter from its previously projected budget, but the city will still spend on migrant services in 2024, including the costs of the Denver Asylum Seekers Program.

Costs of 'doing nothing'

Denver currently has , so one motivation for the new program is to keep these migrants off the streets.

Denver's homeless population to about 10,000 people, even when migrants are not included in the totals. More people on the streets leads to higher care costs in and for .

If the program means that some of the costs associated with "doing nothing" are avoided, then those avoided costs could go to other income support and preventive programs. This idea was illustrated in 2023 when Denver faced extra expenditures on migrant services and around $2 million was paid from , shortchanging other programs.

How Denver's program addresses issues

The Denver program is a direct response to for newly arrived asylum-seekers, which—in recent months—have taken as long as a year. Under federal law, before even applying to legally work in this country.

The Denver program is designed to put that waiting period to good use via , which increases the odds that migrants will quickly secure employment as soon as they're allowed to work.

Workforce training will benefit not only the migrants themselves, but also their dependent family members and local economies. Recently published statistics show that, so getting migrant parents to work will minimize costs to programs that support children like public welfare services.

Other benefits of migrant services

Research suggests that supporting migrants will also promote .

An economics professor at Montana State University found that a 100-dollar increase in monthly assistance received by refugees through the federal program was associated with . The research concluded that refugee assistance was cost-effective to bridge refugees into well-matched jobs. Those jobs, in turn, contribute to the long-run economy that benefits everyone.

Refugee integration has also been shown to be valuable for Colorado specifically. Professors from the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado Anschutz documented links between economic sufficiency and of . They measured integration based on understanding American culture, knowing legal rights, and other aspects of social and economic stability.

Investment returns of migrant employment

A to investments in new migrants is the possibility of labor-market displacement of native-born workers. However, in a , refugee admissions were shown to have not affected wages or employment for natives over a 30-year study period.

In 2018, the generated $611 million in new economic activity in the state. The rate of return was $1.23 in new state and local tax revenue for each $1 invested in refugee services.

If this first-of-its-kind program achieves this same return on investment, it can be expanded or replicated in other cities to decrease migrant expenditure and promote local economic sustainability.

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