Niskanen Center’s county model lists Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Cecil, Dorchester, Garrett, Howard, and Worcester. Its own papers push for letting local governments and private groups sponsor immigrants directly.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A Washington think tank that has taken $1.65 million from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has decided that eight Maryland counties are good places for more immigrants. Nothing in its published documents says any of those counties were asked.
The Niskanen Center released the list in November 2025 as part of its Migration Match Index. The Maryland counties are Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, Cecil, Dorchester, Garrett, Howard and Worcester. Natalie Winters drew fresh attention to the project on Oct. 12 in a Substack report. MDBayNews went to Niskanen’s own documents to check it.
“No voter elected Niskanen.”
The index starts with economic data. Whether a place is actually welcoming comes later, as a second screen. For people in Garrett County or on the Eastern Shore, that order of operations is worth noticing. No voter elected Niskanen.
“Nothing in its published documents says any of those counties were asked.”
How a county makes the list
The index was written by Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an Immigration Policy Analyst at Niskanen. It scored every county in the country on 16 indicators, then built a baseline list from five measures. A county has to meet all of them:
- An unemployment rate below 4.3 percent
- At least 14 percent of residents age 65 or older
- Average two-bedroom rent at or below 30 percent of median income
- A rental vacancy rate above 5 percent
- More job openings than unemployed workers
Niskanen says the model hunts for places with “aging, stagnant, or insufficient native labor supply” and housing to spare. In plain terms, it looks for older counties with empty apartments and asks how newcomers could fill them.
The report is open about the uses it has in mind. It says the data could guide resettlement after a crisis, after “an influx of asylum seekers at the border,” or in a redesign of refugee admissions.
Residents’ views are not one of the five measures. The report says that if a county meets “welcoming” criteria like those set by groups such as Welcoming America, a match between migrants and that county can be made with “reasonable assurance.” The data is a snapshot of the summer of 2025, and the authors say policymakers should keep it updated.
The model also leans on a shortcut. To count unemployed workers, Niskanen estimated each county’s labor force as 62.3 percent of its population, the national average, then multiplied by the local unemployment rate. A county’s real workforce could look different. The model does not measure whether local schools, hospitals or social services could handle new arrivals.
“The model does not measure whether local schools, hospitals or social services could handle new arrivals.”
What the same group wants Washington to do
Two weeks before the index, on Nov. 6, 2025, Niskanen published an immigration blueprint. It recommends that states run their own visa programs. It also says to “enable local governments and private entities to sponsor immigrants directly,” and to create programs that encourage new arrivals to stay in specific states and regions.
Read together, the two documents are two parts of one agenda. One identifies counties with the economic conditions Niskanen considers favorable for immigration. The other argues for giving states, localities, and private groups bigger roles in sponsoring newcomers and keeping them in particular regions.
The blueprint also proposes a path to legal status for unauthorized immigrants who have lived in the country more than 10 years and have no serious criminal record. It asks the government to limit enforcement in hospitals, churches, and schools except for the most serious offenders. Niskanen pairs those ideas with real-time employment verification and an entry-exit system to track visa overstays.
Who pays for the work
Niskanen’s funding list, updated in July 2026, shows $300,000 from Open Society Foundations (listed as “Open Society Foundation”) for immigration work, running from Sept. 1, 2024, through Feb. 27, 2026. That window covers the release of both November 2025 documents. Open Society Foundations was founded by George Soros.
That was not a one-time gift. The Open Society Foundations’ own grants database lists seven grants to Niskanen entities between 2017 and 2024, totaling $1.65 million:
- $500,000 and $250,000 in 2017
- $300,000 in 2019
- $75,000 in 2020 and $75,000 in 2021
- $150,000 in 2023
- $300,000 in 2024
Four of the seven went to Niskanen Center for Public Policy, the group’s separate advocacy arm. The database search does not show what each grant was for, so this story does not call the full $1.65 million immigration funding. The $300,000 grant on Niskanen’s own list is the one it identifies as immigration work.
The same list names other immigration funders:
- Carnegie Corporation of New York, $400,000
- Migration Policy Institute, $100,000
- Freedom Together Foundation, $75,000
- Silicon Valley Community Foundation, $75,000
The list covers only donors with active gifts of $10,000 or more this year, and Niskanen does not say which grant paid for which paper. The grant records show financial support for Niskanen’s immigration work. They do not show that Open Society directed the county selections or the findings of the index.
Niskanen’s public tax returns do not itemize donors. They show revenue of $11.28 million in 2023 and $9.96 million in 2024. Immigration spending is not broken out. It sits inside a category of “various other programs,” which ran $4.27 million in 2024.
“The grant records show financial support for Niskanen’s immigration work. They do not show that Open Society directed the county selections or the findings of the index.”
From private sponsors to state placement
Niskanen’s 2025 annual report says it “helped conceive and implement” Welcome Corps, the private refugee sponsorship program the State Department launched in January 2023. A Niskanen retrospective from April 2025 says more than 160,000 Americans had signed up to sponsor refugees by January 2025. Maryland was one of the top 10 states for private sponsorship.
A Welcome Corps pilot called Welcome Corps at Work let refugee candidates interview with U.S. employers. A job offer led to resettlement processing and a match with a sponsor group in the employer’s community. Niskanen reports that 12 employers extended offers to 23 candidates. Those numbers count offers, not arrivals.
Colorado’s state refugee services page says the federal government terminated Welcome Corps on Feb. 26, 2025. On March 5, 2026, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Pacito v. Trump that the president likely has the power to suspend refugee admissions. The same court partly upheld lower-court orders against the government’s cancellation of cooperative agreements with resettlement groups, saying it likely did not give a reasoned explanation.
Niskanen is now working on what comes next. In a Sept. 30 paper, Claire Holba writes that the federal government is moving toward a state-centered refugee model. A January 2025 executive order called for a bigger state and local role in deciding where refugees are placed. In October 2025, the administration moved initial reception and placement duties from the State Department to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services. That office expects to pilot a state-centered model in fiscal 2027, with a national framework expected in fiscal 2028, according to the paper. That is a plan, not a finished program.
The paper’s disclosure says the Welcoming Initiative for Newcomers received $1.25 million from HHS and that Niskanen is a subcontractor. It does not say how much of that money goes to Niskanen. It says the State Capacity and Readiness Assessment project is financed entirely with federal funds. So a think tank that also takes private foundation money on immigration is working as a subcontractor on a taxpayer-funded project about where refugees could go. The paper does not describe its exact deliverables.
The question for local officials
“A spot on the list is not an agreement.”
Niskanen says communities should be consulted, and the September paper says states should gather real input from residents. That is the right instinct. It is also a promise on paper.
A spot on the list is not an agreement. None of the documents reviewed for this story shows an agency using the index to place people, and none identifies a public consultation involving the eight Maryland counties. But the model is built, the counties are named, and Washington is moving toward a system in which states take on more of the decisions.
“But the model is built, the counties are named, and Washington is moving toward a system in which states take on more of the decisions.”
County commissioners and council members in the eight counties may want to ask a few things now:
- Has anyone from Niskanen, a state agency, or a federal office contacted the county about the index?
- Who would decide whether a county is “welcoming,” and by what standard?
- Would elected county and state officials have a vote, or only a comment period?
- What would local taxpayers owe for housing, schools, and services if placements came?
What to Watch
- Maryland’s role in the pilot. Niskanen’s paper says the federal office expects to pilot the new model in fiscal 2027 with states ready to take part. It does not say which states.
- The sponsorship proposals. Whether any of the blueprint’s local and private sponsorship ideas move from a think tank paper into legislation or federal rules.
- A data refresh. The index is a snapshot, and Niskanen says policymakers should keep updating it. A new version could change which Maryland counties appear.
Sources: Niskanen Center, “Mapping America’s immigration needs: A county-level model for matching migrants to local economies,” Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, Nov. 20, 2025, including the report PDF and its baseline county appendix. Niskanen Center, “Immigration beyond the extremes: a blueprint that actually works,” Niskanen Immigration Team, Nov. 6, 2025. Niskanen Center, 2025 Annual Report. Niskanen Center, funding sources list, July 2026 update. Niskanen Center Inc., IRS Form 990 for tax years 2023 and 2024. Claire Holba, “A Welcome Corps retrospective: How red and blue America embraced refugee sponsorship,” Niskanen Center, April 23, 2025. Claire Holba, “A future U.S. refugee program will center states’ interests and leadership,” Niskanen Center, Sept. 30, 2026. Open Society Foundations, “Who We Are,” and its grants database (search for “Niskanen,” seven grants, 2017 to 2024). Colorado Refugee Services Program, “Refugee Sponsorship” page. Ninth Circuit, Pacito v. Trump, March 5, 2026, as reported by Jurist. Natalie Winters, “Who Picks Your Town? Inside the Soros-Backed Push to Choose Where Migrants Settle,” Substack, Oct. 12, 2026, which was the lead for this story.
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