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Without Migrant Labor, a Minnesota Resort’s 460 U.S. Workers at Risk
Ben Thuringer is the managing director of Madden’s on Gull Lake, a resort founded by his grandfather in 1929 in the Brainerd Lakes Region of Central Minnesota. The family resort is a seasonal getaway, operating April through October, with more than 1,000 acres and 283 rooms. “Of the 520 people we employ each season, 58 […]
Read MoreAmericans Forget They Descend From Immigrants, Says Minnesotan
Aaron J. Brown, a community college instructor and proud native of Hibbing, Minnesota, says some on the Mesabi Iron Range seem to have forgotten that they are the descendants of immigrants. A century ago, Hibbing was as diverse as New York City is today. “Many great-great-grandparents of Hibbing residents came from another country,” he says. […]
Read MoreAmericans Don’t Apply, Wisconsin Dairy Farmer Says
Paul Fetzer is the fourth-generation owner of his family’s dairy farm, Fetzer Farms, which he operates with his brothers in Elmwood, Wisconsin. With 1,350 cows, the business requires 26 full-time employees, and today 18 of those employees are immigrants. “We’ll put ads out locally trying to attract American-born workers, and we just don’t hear anything […]
Read MoreMinister Asks Christian Colleagues to Step Up on Behalf of Immigrants
During his commute to Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, religion professor Santiago Piñón passes about 20 churches, many of which have billboards advertising the next Sunday’s sermon. “I have never seen one that said ‘Welcome the Stranger’ or ‘Be Kind to Your Neighbor.’ I would have been there. I want to hear that,” says […]
Read MoreWithout More Foreign Workers, Oregon Vintner Asks, ‘What Will We Do?’
In the 1970s, when Patricia Dudley and her husband left academic jobs to grow pinot noir grapes, they ran the small vineyard with family co-owners. “We wanted to be more connected to the natural world and the earth,” says Dudley, president of Bethel Heights Vineyard, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. “In the beginning we did everything […]
Read MoreSpike in Corruption Followed Last Hiring Surge at CBP and ICE
When President Trump signed three immigration executive orders in January of this year, much of the attention was focused on the travel ban and border wall. But within those orders is another proposal that is equally troubling: his call for hiring 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. […]
Read MorePastor Sees Immigrants Through Lens of Bible — and the Economy
Dr. Carl Ruby, a conservative Christian pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, believes that immigration reform is a civil rights issue. It was a lesson he learned decades ago, when he first read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” “I saw that it was an issue that white, conservative Christians should […]
Read MoreWhat Does the Future Hold for Haitians with TPS? The Trump Administration May Terminate It
Since a massive earthquake ravaged much of Haiti, nationals of the country have been allowed to live and work in the United States under a benefit called Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Their status, however, may soon be terminated by the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must decide the fate of Haiti’s TPS […]
Read MoreGuatemalan Immigrant Works to Boost Earnings for Small U.S. Farms
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin was born and raised in Guatemala and came to the United States in 1992 after his wife, Amy, who was born and raised in the United States, enrolled in a master’s degree program at the University of Minnesota. “We had made education part of our promise to each other, so I packed up […]
Read MoreUtah 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 election. “The labor force just […]
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