Barrett Chapin: Headline misleading about small population gain article

To The Daily Sun,

I would like to point out that your title for the article on page 11 of the Feb. 3, Laconia Daily Sun, “NH ekes out small population gain due to immigration,” was incorrect. Based on the graph shown within the article, the population gain in New Hampshire between 2020 and 2025 was due to domestic migration, not immigration.

The graph was every enlightening. It showed data for New England as a whole, then each individual New England state. We can see from the graph that the three northern New England states (Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire) had greater population increases due to domestic migration than from immigration. While the three southern New England states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) had more immigration than domestic migration.

I will speculate that these population changes were due to people in southern New England moving to northern New England due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which occurred during these years of 2020 to 2025, but I have no data to support that speculation.

Why do I bother to point out the inaccuracy in the title? If someone were to read the title and not look closely at the data, they would come away thinking that immigration was a large contribution to the population increase in NH, when it was really domestic migration that increased our population. This a very important distinction in today’s world, where the multibillion dollar budget of ICE is being used to track down illegal immigrants for deportation.

I ask myself, “why has ICE been deployed to Portland and Lewiston, Maine when Maine has had fewer people immigrate there than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island has?” Could Donald Trump’s well known feud with Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills have anything to do with it?

Barrett Chapin

Belmont