Immigrants are keeping rural America alive
The old cliché is that immigrants come to the United States to do the jobs Americans won't do. In reality, they're often here to do the jobs that Americans aren't
around to do — at least in the rural parts of the country.
Last week's 2020 census results showed that the country's urbanization is continuing apace: While cities and metropolitan areas are growing, rural areas are
emptying out. In my home state of Kansas, 80 of 105 counties lost population in the last decade; next door, in Nebraska, only 24 of 93 counties added people. This is having obvious political ramifications —
90 percent of the counties nationwide that lost population voted for Donald Trump. "Blue America is driving America's population growth,"
Slate's Jordan Weissman wrote over the weekend.
But if rural America contains Trump's most fervent backers, it is also the part of the country that might be harmed most by his anti-immigration policies. The census results also show it is immigrants who are keeping the population of many rural regions from collapsing outright — and who end up doing the work that keeps many of us fed.
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