Immigration Revitalised town is latest target for far-right hate

There is one thing about her community that makes Kristin Hopkins-Calcek prouder than anything: her city is one of the few boroughs in Pennsylvania with a growing population.

- Stephen Starr

"We haven't invested in our borough for a long time," says the Charleroi council president, "and now we are finally able to do that - it's because we have a need to."

Surrounded by retired power plants, railway lines and steel mills, Charleroi in south-west Pennsylvania was once the epitome of Rust Belt America. For decades, factories here and in the surrounding area closed and people moved away, its population falling by about 60%.

But in recent years, immigrants have descended on the town of 4,200 people, drawn by well-paying jobs and cheap housing. According to the 2020 census, for the first time in a century, more people chose to make this quiet community on the banks of the Monongahela River their home rather than flee it.

The first job Rodny Michel could find when he arrived in Charleroi four years ago was line work at a food-preparation company and, later, similarly gruelling work at an Amazon factory in a nearby town. Today, as the native of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, sees his community grow in Charleroi, his work day involves turning an empty, dated store on Fallowfield Avenue into a Caribbean restaurant that will serve the town's growing immigrant community.