Stories
Utah Farmer: ‘Not Once’ Has an American Applied to Milk My Cows
In November 2016, shortly after the presidential election, Ron Gibson had to reduce his Utah dairy farm’s milking schedule from four times a day to three times a day. There weren’t enough people on staff to do the work, as many immigrant laborers had disappeared from the area after the… Read More
Migrant Worker Shortage Increases Strain on Oregon’s Dairy Farmers
Under the current agricultural guest worker program, farmers can hire foreign laborers for a maximum 10-month season only. But try explaining that to the cows, which must be milked year-round, two to three times a day. “The guest worker program doesn’t meet the needs of dairy farmers,” says Tami Kerr,… Read More
War Refugee Trains Americans to Fill Buffalo’s Skills Gaps
Bassam Deeb arrived in the United States as a teenage refugee. It was 1976, and his family had fled Lebanon, a country mired in a civil war that would last until 1990 and cost the country an estimated 120,000 lives. Deeb, 15 at the time, spoke no English and… Read More
Thai Doctor Served Where Many U.S. Physicians Don’t: In Rural Kentucky
Dr. Manosh Vongvises, a retired ear, nose, and throat specialist, has seen the number of medical professionals in Pikeville, Kentucky, multiply in the last 30 years — and many are immigrants like him. According to a report by New American Economy, 21.6 percent of the doctors in… Read More
Retired Teacher Now Teaches Refugees, to Town’s Benefit
Nearly 10 years ago, when Dr. Lois Todd-Meyer was a high school English teacher, one student in particular left an impression. “She’s what would today be called a Dreamer,” Todd-Meyer recalls. The student, brought to the United States at a very young age, was determined to become a doctor. But… Read More
Troy Professor: Make It Easier For High-Skilled Workers And Entrepreneurs to Immigrate
Maryam Stevenson has dedicated her professional career to studying how high-skilled immigrants help the American economy. As an immigration attorney in Memphis in the mid-aughts, she specialized in skilled worker visas for the healthcare industry. Today, as an assistant professor of political science at Troy University in Troy, Alabama, she… Read More
Argentinian Immigrant Helps Immigrants Contribute in Omaha
As executive director of Justice For Our Neighbors-Nebraska (JFON-NE), Emiliano Lerda helps families build productive lives in Nebraska and southwest Iowa, a move that in turn helps to bolster the regional economy. Take the young immigrant mother of two who fled domestic violence. When the legal team met her, the… Read More
A Meatpacker’s Son Now Helps Other Nebraska Youth Succeed
Growing up in Lexington, Nebraska, in the 1990s, Luis Sotelo witnessed a cultural transition when Latin American workers arrived to fill a demand for labor in a new meatpacking plant. “And today we are seeing a new wave of immigrants in Lexington,” says Sotelo, who serves as chief diversity officer… Read More
Rather Than Innovate in U.S., Foreign Students Now Consider Leaving
Like many international students, Qiao Zhang had hoped to stay in the United States after receiving his master’s degree in quantitative finance from Rutgers Business School. Now, with the future of immigration policy so uncertain, he may go back to China. It’s something a lot of his fellow international students… Read More
A Mexican Doll Shows Kids ‘our Differences are our Strength’
In 2014, Leslie Guzman was trying to think of a way to remind her children of their Mexican heritage. As it turned out, one of her neighbors in Cincinnati had created Mensch on a Bench, a toy that teaches children about Jewish culture. Inspiration struck. She decided to create a… Read More
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