By F. Amanda Tugade | Des Moines Register | AUG. 22, 2023 |
A rural county in Iowa is at the center of a study analyzing the impact of immigrants on communities that have long seen their populations decline.
Sioux County — one of the state's largest corn producers and home to several meatpacking plants — is one of three counties featured in a new report that shows how immigrants have helped revitalize small towns and strengthen its workforce. FWD, a bipartisan political organization in Washington, D.C., released the 35-page report, claiming that an influx of immigrants — even as small as 100 to 200 a year — could rebuild rural America.
Phillip Connor, senior demographer at FWD, said the number of residents living in rural counties has continued to decrease in the last two decades. The people are leaving often in their "prime working years," and their reasons differ: work, education, family or other business opportunities, the report said.
That loss is tough.
"This is not only a population loss, but also a real loss of people, deeply felt by communities in which they had lived much of their lives," the report stated.
But who they leave behind leads to another issue.
According to the report, 77% of the nation's rural counties have fewer "working-age people" — those between the ages of 15 to 64 — than 20 years ago. And the gap will continue to widen unless a demographic change occurs, Connor told the Des Moines Register.
What happened in Sioux County?
Take Sioux County for example.
The northwest Iowa county — which is home to about 36,000 residents — experienced a dip in its population in the 1980s and 1990s, its numbers largely stagnant by 2000. But that changed as nearly 4,000 Latino immigrants arrived in the area between 2000 and 2020. Many of them came from Mexico and Central America and decided to settle in the county because they found work and found the cost of living affordable. They also thought the county was a good place to raise their children, the report said.
Last year, 36% of students in the Sioux Center Community School District identified as Hispanic, according to the Iowa School Performance Profile. The district even built a new high school and an intermediate school just to accommodate its rising number of students. And while rural churches are disappearing, there was community demand to launch a new Catholic church for Spanish-speaking residents, the report noted.
But Connor said the county's growth isn't unique. It plays into a historical pattern.
Many of the county's communities were founded by Dutch immigrants at the end of the 19th century, and by 1920, immigrants made up 22% of the county's population, the report said.
"So the movement of just a hundred or so immigrants each year fits the county’s long history as a close-knit community built by immigrants," the report said.
What can be done to bring immigrants to rural counties?
State and federal leaders could boost existing pathways like refugee resettlement or humanitarian relief to help lead immigrants to rural areas, the report suggested. It also said that Congress could support American industries and expand and increase the efficiency of their visa programs.
"One of the things that we hear continually from rural leaders is that they're not looking just for forever guests that come temporarily," Connor said. They want people to stay — for families to grow up in the communities.
Connor told the Register there needs to be more advocacy for immigration and America's rural counties.
"Rural America has a population need. (It has) an economic need, not just the continuance of their communities but in some cases even the economic survivability of some of their communities," he explained.
