Your home can be your birthplace. Or where you raise a family. Or where you bury your kin.
For a growing number of immigrants, home is far west Kansas in a city of 28,000, a world away from Mogadishu, Mexico City and Myanmar.
It’s where women in burqas stroll down a Norman Rockwell Main Street festooned with early Fourth of July banners. And where a Buddhist temple sits alongside grocery stores selling Mexican soft drinks and 50-pound bags of jasmine rice.
“This is my home. I want to become American,” said Abshiro Warsame, a Somali woman who works the late shift at the nearby Tyson beef packing plant.
Warsame came to the United States seven years ago, after her husband was murdered. A U.S. flag hangs in her small, shared flat. In her spare time, she studies English and Spanish.
It’s a new look for the heartland — and perhaps a glimpse of where America is headed.
By 2050, the Census Bureau predicts, the United States will have a new minority: whites. Already, non-Hispanic whites are the minority in California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii, and about one in 10 U.S. counties.
America’s future arrived early in Garden City. New census numbers show that whites now account for just under 50 percent of Finney County’s 42,000 residents. Latinos make up 45 percent, with blacks and growing numbers of Africans and Asians rounding out the rest.
The county is the latest in Kansas where whites are the new minority.
According to projections, the 2010 U.S. Census will show that whites will be the minority in as many as four Kansas counties: Finney, Seward, Grant, and Ford. All are southwestern Kansas counties that supply labor to meat packing plants. Non-Hispanic whites for years have been a minority in Wyandotte County, with its large African-American and Hispanic populations.
Missouri has no county like that — but that’s likely to change in the next decade. Already, minorities make up more than 40 percent of those under 20 years of age in Jackson County, a sign that minority populations are gaining demographic ground and not just in rural areas.
Across the nation, the new immigrants are bringing with them new challenges for established communities. Schools are searching for more money to hire interpreters. Governments are struggling to integrate newcomers in a strange land. Long-time residents are adapting to neighbors who look, cook and speak differently.
Not surprisingly, some people are pushing back.
Arizona sparked a political firestorm earlier this year by passing a law to crack down on illegal immigration. Just last week, citizens in Fremont, Neb., — also a meatpacking town — approved a law prohibiting businesses and landlords from hiring or renting to illegal immigrants.
But the changes may be inexorable. The white population is aging and birthrates are falling. Hispanic birthrates are rising. So is legal immigration. Meatpacking centers such as Garden City offer an attractive destination during a down economy, with plentiful jobs that require few skills and little training.
Like their predecessors, the new immigrants bring their own cultures and controversies. Last month, Somali residents ruffled some feathers in Garden City after they requested a Muslim-only section in the city cemetery for religious reasons.
“This is our home now,” said Abdulkadir Mohamed, a Somali Muslim and translator at the Tyson plant who moved here in 2006. “But we need a place for us in the cemetery.”
Although most in town are handling the religious differences well, the request touched off a debate that exposed holes in the city’s seemingly strong ethnic tapestry.
“We’ve been too politically correct for too long,” said Leonard Hitz, a former Marine, retired banker and self-described cowboy poet. “If you want to come to this country and be an American, you’re welcome. But learn the language and assimilate.”
While other rural Kansas communities see populations dwindle and economies decline as their young people move away, Garden City is growing.
But into what, many wonder?
“This community doesn’t look like it once did in the ’50s and ’60s,” said former mayor Nancy Harness. “But you know, the communities that look the same way they did back then? They’re all dying. These people bring fresh blood. They bring children.”
The plant
Lunch break at the Tyson plant erupts into a riot of language and color.
Tall Somali women glide by in flowing red and green gowns. Groups of tired-looking men chat in Burmese — one of the 14 languages spoken in the plant.
Many carry shiny meat hooks and the thin, straight blades used to carve cattle into roasts, loins, T-bones and strip steaks.
The plant was once the largest beef processing plant in the world, butchering up to 5,700 cattle a day. Tyson employs 3,100 workers, more than the next six largest employers in Finney County combined. The plant buys $1 billion worth of cattle each year, many from nearby ranches.
Wages start at $12.30 an hour, and it’s tough, bloody work.
The plant has long relied on immigrant labor willing to do it, according to plant manager Paul Karkiainen. Tyson hires interpreters to translate for the many ethnicities. Signs in the lunch room are posted in three languages: Spanish, English and Vietnamese.
“We probably could add a few new ones,” said Jonathan Galia, a Baptist minister who works as the plant chaplain.
All Tyson plants employ chaplains such as Galia, who minister to workers and help integrate them into the community. He left his native Philippines 17 years ago. Now a citizen, Galia worked as a hospital chaplain before taking the job at the plant.
“You have to reach people where they are,” Galia said of his unusual parish.
Sometimes that means reaching across a religious divide. Islam requires adherents to pray five times daily. To accommodate new Muslim workers, Tyson set up separate prayer rooms for men and women. The company also supplied prayer rugs, each outfitted with a compass to allow Muslims to pray toward Mecca.
The rooms fill up with workers from Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.
“If we didn’t have this, we could not work here,” said Somali immigrant Farah Hanaf, 26. “It shows that they accept us.”
Galia works with members of each ethnic group to resolve conflicts. Earlier this year, he helped put together a Coalition of Ethnic Minority Leaders to work on improving assimilation.
“We try to send the message of, ‘Hey, you’re not a refugee forever. This is your home now,’ ” Galia said.
But some point out that it was somebody else’s home first.
The reception
Although the rest of the nation has been loudly debating immigration policy in recent years, Garden City has been quietly going about the business of integration for generations.
The city’s first immigrants were white settlers who displaced Native Americans. The railroad and a sugar beet plant attracted Mexican immigrants looking for work.
Over the years, they and their descendants learned English, became citizens and started businesses. Now, three or four generations later, the older immigrants watch as new immigrants from even farther away follow in their great-grandparents’ footsteps.
“You see them everywhere,” said Yuri Chavez, a lifelong resident of southwest Kansas. “But they don’t bother people. I believe if you leave other people alone they’ll leave you alone.”
The city’s long history with immigrants may make it more welcoming today, experts noted. Kansas State University anthropology professor Janet Benson researched immigration in Garden City in the ’80s and ’90s and was struck by what she calls the city’s “quiet accommodation.”
“People get used to each other,” Benson said. “Our ancestors did. One of the ways they did it was through the legal system and the political arena. As people become citizens they learn about their rights. They vote. And that’s how we change as a people.”
Omar Flores moved to Garden City eight years ago from Chihuahua, Mexico. He said he rarely encounters anti-immigrant hostility.
“This town is different,” Flores said while taking his 2-year-old daughter, Adaliz, to a local carnival. “They’re more welcoming. I think they’re used to it.”
School Superintendent Rick Atha agreed. He moved to Garden City five years ago, after spending most of his career in Missouri schools. He said he was surprised at how well the community was adjusting.
“Diversity is not new here. It’s third, fourth generation,” Atha said. “There’s more of a tendency to embrace rather than reject or deny. It’s what makes the agribusiness economy work. It’s who we are.”
Despite the recent recession, unemployment in Garden City is below state and national averages. While two-thirds of the counties in the Great Plains lost population in the last 60 years, Finney County has grown.
That immigration is in Garden City’s self-interest may explain why few in this town speak openly against it. Hitz, the cowboy poet, said he counted several Vietnamese immigrants as close friends. It’s not immigrants that bother him, he said, but those who show no interest in assimilating.
He strongly objects to talk of giving Muslim residents a special corner of the public cemetery. If it’s good enough for everyone else, he reasons, it should be good enough for them.
“I couldn’t go to another country and say ‘I’m not accustomed to your ways, so I’m going to stick with mine,’ ” Hitz said.
“They wouldn’t stand that. This country is a melting pot. What’s made this country great is that people came here for the freedoms, and in the process they assimilated.”
Debbie Jordan is a longtime resident, business owner and a leader in the local “tea party” movement.
“The people I talk to here are in the complete support of the Arizona law,” Jordan said. “The government needs to secure our borders.”
Jordan said she had no problem with her new neighbors — as long as they got here legally. Jordan owns a mobile home park and rents to many Mexican-Americans. She said she had come to respect their work ethic.
She is concerned, however, that the immigrants could take jobs from long-time residents.
“It’s nothing against the people,” Jordan said. “But the plants and the factories bring them in and meanwhile we’ve got all these people (in the country) unemployed.”
The challenges
The immigration tsunami hit Garden City’s schools hardest.
Imagine the challenge of teaching 3,000 schoolchildren who speak a language other than English. The district, which has 7,400 pupils, had to hire more English language teachers. Even the cafeteria menu was changed to offer familiar foods.
But thanks to the community’s number of low-income immigrant households, the school district receives more money than other districts. Indeed, Garden City schools get $60 million in state and federal funding, compared with the $40 million received by the similarly sized De Soto district.
“It’s a real challenge, but I consider it more of an opportunity,” Superintendent Atha said. “Because if a teacher really wants to make a difference with kids, Garden City is a great place to teach. Because we do have really needy kids that are really hungry for learning.”
Police also are coping with a rise in crime.
Several years ago, Garden City briefly became one of the more dangerous cities in Kansas because of drug-fueled gang violence. Crime rates have stabilized now, but last month police met with representatives of each ethnic group to discuss a new strategy that will place an officer in each neighborhood.
Several ethnic leaders told police that immigrants sometimes feel uncomfortable contacting the authorities.
“Some of these people have no concept even of democracy or of law enforcement,” said Galia, the Tyson chaplain. “When you see a Somali shake hands with a police officer, it’s a very special thing.”
Local leaders have pushed the federal government for years to open an immigration office so residents wouldn’t have to drive to Wichita or Kansas City. So far, it hasn’t happened.
Instead, much of the day-to-day work of integrating newcomers falls to a state-funded social service agency known as the Adult Learning Center. The center works with immigrants to find housing, jobs and health care. It also translates government forms and helps them work toward citizenship or their GED.
“Every day is a little different,” said Velia Mendoza, the center’s refugee coordinator, who has taught immigrants how to use unfamiliar appliances such as washing machines and microwave ovens.
During one stop at an apartment complex catering to Burmese immigrants, Mendoza was swarmed by women. One wanted help translating a letter. Another wanted to know how she could find out whether her application for food stamps had been approved.
“Sometimes they just need a little help,” Mendoza said. “Next time, they’ll be able to do it themselves.”
The dream
A few miles east of the Tyson plant, several Somali men sit in the shade of a tree, smoking and discussing a recent World Cup soccer match. Because Somalia can’t field a functioning government, let alone a World Cup soccer team, the men root for South Africa.
Across the street, dozens of Burmese children ride bicycles and run barefoot. Most are Karen, a minority that for years fought for independence in Burma. Thousands still live in refugee camps along the Thai border.
Now, hundreds live here in a bare-bones apartment complex that rents two-bedroom units for $500 a month.
Inside one, Ta Poh Poh, 42, watches her two daughters, 5-month-old Paw Sher Gay and 6-year-old Paw Sher Wah. Despite her young age, Paw Sher Wah wears the makeup customary for most Burmese girls and women.
Awards from Paw Sher Wah’s elementary school hang proudly on the wall. So does a cheap clock — still in its original clear plastic and cardboard packaging. The family didn’t know the packaging was supposed to be removed before hanging the clock.
Suddenly, the door opens and their father arrives from shopping at Walmart. Ta Ma Lahtoo, 45, works the late shift at Tyson. It is a good job, he said through a translator. Hard work but worth it.
“We are going to stay here for our children,” he said.
Ta Poh Poh nods. She likes Garden City’s small-town feel and the endless horizons of the high plains. But she knows all too well that fate can take strange turns.
“What place belongs to us?” she said. “We’ll stay here as long as we can.”
Ko “Kujo” Kyaw also rents one of the apartments for his wife and three children. Until last year, the 39-year-old Burmese immigrant had one of the toughest jobs at the plant. Using a long blade, he would slit the throats of cattle to drain their blood immediately after slaughter.
But sometimes the animals aren’t quite dead. They lash out violently with their powerful hooves. Kyaw wore a protective face mask to avoid injury.
One day last year, he sliced a finger with his knife. Surgery repaired the injury, but he said he lost his job anyway. Now he works as a makeshift taxi driver, making a few bucks driving other immigrants around town.
Like many Americans today, he worries about what will happen if he can’t find regular work. He doesn’t want to leave Garden City.
“I feel like I belong here,” he said. “Muslim, not Muslim, it doesn’t matter. Here in a democratic country, it doesn’t matter. Here we are all the same.”
Kyaw and his wife, Ne Lar, lived for two years in a refugee camp before being approved for resettlement. Their youngest child — named Look Man — was born in Garden City three months ago.
They hold big dreams for him.
“He’s a citizen. He’ll have lots of opportunity,” Kyaw said, laughing and scratching his dark skin with his injured finger.
“You never know. He could be president.”
To reach David Klepper, call 785-354-1388 or send e-mail to dklepper@kcstar.com.
Source: http://www.kansascity.com
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