Transplants Outnumber Native Idahoans in These 18 Significant Idaho Cities

Does anyone remember reading Dr. Suess’s The Sneetches in elementary school? Living in Idaho is starting to feel eerily like the famous children's author’s cautionary tale. 

Not familiar with the story? We’ll try to sum it up as quickly as we can, but feel free to watch the full story on YouTube. The Sneetches are yellow that live on a beach. Some of the Sneetches have stars on their tummies. Others don’t. The star-bellied Sneetches act like they’re better than everyone else and exclude the other Sneetches from their fun. 

A con-artist comes into town with a machine that can give any Sneetch a star…for a price. Desperate to fit-in, the non star-bellied Sneetches hand over the cash. When the original star-bellied Sneetches realized what happened, they were appalled. The con-artist said he could remove their star…for a price. Eventually, the Sneetches ran through those machines so many times that no one could remember who was who. 

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While the man with the machines was purely in it for the cash, he accidentally taught the Sneetches a lesson about judging others over something so shallow. 

Sounds familiar, right? Except the Idaho version of this tale is folks who grew up in Idaho vs those who relocated here for whatever reason. “Go back to Cali, you transplant” is one of the most common insults you’ll see in the comments section of just about any article. Folks use that regardless of where someone came from. 

We get it. Change is hard. What’s happened to Idaho’s housing market and outdated infrastructure is something to be frustrated with. It’s ok to mourn what once was. But it shouldn’t be commonplace to be ugly to someone because of where their mother chose to give birth to them. They weren’t consulted and likely couldn’t have even considered relocating away from their family until they were 18. 

We share the story of the Sneetches and a gentle reminder that kindness goes a long way, because in many of Idaho’s biggest cities the number of “transplants” actually outweigh  the number of residents that have lived in Idaho their entire lives. 

Which cities? We looked at the most recent American Community Survey data from the United States Census Bureau to find out. Data was collected for Idaho cities with an estimated population of 5,000 or more.