Immigration Debate in North Dakota

Kathy Kiely writes in USA Today:

The tension in North Dakota reflects why the nation’s debate over immigration is likely to be such a potent issue in next year’s presidential campaign. More than 1,400 miles from the nation’s southwestern border and far from the cities where the debate has been most prominent, the conflicts many communities face in dealing with an aging workforce are exposed in North Dakota like the flat prairie landscape after the fall harvest.

Nationally, the U.S. Commerce Department projects that the number of people in prime working years, ages 25 to 54, will increase 0.3% a year through 2015. In the third quarter of this year, the economy grew by 3.9%.

“We’re facing a dramatic labor shortage,” Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a speech in March. “Without immigrants, we don’t have enough workers. Period.”

The demographic crisis in North Dakota is more severe. The population increased in only six of North Dakota’s 53 counties from 1990 to 2000.

“We simply don’t have enough workers,” says Orville Tranby, a community leader who in 1999 helped Griggs County, where Cooperstown is the seat, and neighboring Steele County win a 10-year federal grant to create jobs and stem population loss.

When developers proposed locating a dairy in the area, however, the community shot it down. A proposed hog plant is facing similar opposition. Tranby says it’s because some residents fear such facilities might attract a wave of Hispanic immigrants who could change the local culture. Click here for the full story.

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