Stories

Stories

Family’s 136-Year-Old Landscaping Business Depends on Immigrants

Family’s 136-Year-Old Landscaping Business Depends on Immigrants

Hispanic immigrants make up roughly half of the workforce at Peter Scarff’s family nursery and landscaping business in New Carlisle, Ohio. Without immigrant labor, the  agriculture and service industries in the United States would collapse, Scarff says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s manual work or operating equipment, it is difficult… Read More

Business Owner: Immigrants Boost the Economy, Revitalize Alabama Town

Business Owner: Immigrants Boost the Economy, Revitalize Alabama Town

Robert Hester has owned Hester Printing & Graphics, Inc. in Russellville since 1976. For much of that time, he’s relied on Hispanic immigrants and first-generation customers. “Their business has really helped me,” says Hester. “The invitations for quinceañeras and weddings and things like that are really big. Other people here… Read More

Immigration Policy Needs to Keep Families Together, Says Ohio Lawyer

Immigration Policy Needs to Keep Families Together, Says Ohio Lawyer

Eugenio Mollo says that growing up as the child of Italian immigrants profoundly affected him and his career path. “My parents lacked a formal education, but they are the smartest and most hardworking people that I know,” he says. “And so I grew up seeing immigrants who wanted to work… Read More

Louisiana Crawfish Industry Needs Foreign-Born Workers, Says Local Mayor

Louisiana Crawfish Industry Needs Foreign-Born Workers, Says Local Mayor

Sherbin Collette is the mayor of the Henderson, Louisiana, a small town in the heart of Louisiana crawfish country. He is a commercial fisherman who also serves on the Louisiana Seafood Marketing and Promotion Board. And he has deep concerns about the sustainability of the crawfish… Read More

Grad Aims for Cop Job to Build Trust With Immigrant Communities

Grad Aims for Cop Job to Build Trust With Immigrant Communities

After an impressive series of educational successes, Mexican immigrant Elizabeth Becerra is now applying for a job in law enforcement and hopes to work with either the FBI, the Secret Service or the U.S. Probation and Parole Office. Though the application process is long and difficult, she says, “I know… Read More

One Refugee Couple, Dozens of Entrepreneurial Stories

One Refugee Couple, Dozens of Entrepreneurial Stories

Nadia Kasvin came to the United States under the terms of the Lautenberg Amendment, a 1989 policy that allowed Jews and other religious minorities facing persecution in the former Soviet Union to seek asylum in America. Three years after applying, and after numerous background checks and interviews, Kasvin and her… Read More

Immigration Key to Future of Rural Appalachia

Immigration Key to Future of Rural Appalachia

Jenny Williams, an English professor at Hazard Community and Technical College, knows that immigration has been crucial to rural Perry County. Her father was a doctor in the 1970s, when the region lacked qualified medical professionals. Then Appalachian Regional Healthcare began recruiting foreign-born doctors, primarily from India, to practice at… Read More

Chamber Executive: It’s Amazing What Immigrants Can Accomplish

Chamber Executive: It’s Amazing What Immigrants Can Accomplish

Wilma Cartagena grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to Washington state when she was 22 years old, still struggling to learn English. “People always tell me I have an accent, and they can be so dismissive,” says Cartagena, who went on to earn a degree from the University of… Read More

Farmer Creates Local Jobs — With Help of Migrant Labor

Farmer Creates Local Jobs — With Help of Migrant Labor

Jack Hedin is the owner and operator of Featherstone Farm, a four-season farm in Rushford, Minnesota, that specializes in organic vegetable production. The $1.8 million business employs 15 workers year-round and as many as 35 seasonally, the majority of whom come from Mexico on the H-2A temporary work visa. “That… Read More

Immigrants Start Businesses, Don’t Want Hand-Outs

Immigrants Start Businesses, Don’t Want Hand-Outs

Elizabeth Cervantes is co-founder of the Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project (SSIP), a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights. Based in Bolingbrook, Illinois, the organization caters to the fast-growing immigrant population in the suburbs of Chicago. “About 54 percent of undocumented immigrants in Illinois live in suburban Cook county and collar… Read More

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