Refugees find the American dream down on the farm

In the last few years, a growing – indeed, unprecedented — number of state and local governments, frustrated with the failure of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and increasingly uneasy over the real and imagined changes brought by new immigrants to their communities, have adopted harsh measures that purport to address undocumented immigration and immigrants.

One reason for the vigor of those efforts is the changing distribution of immigrants across the United States. Since 1990, new immigrant communities have emerged in parts of the nation, such as Arkansas, South Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska, and rural areas of the Midwest and South, which had not in recent years seen large numbers of immigrants. Tensions have resulted. Consequently, the debate over immigration in modern times most definitely is not limited to the West and large urban cities in the East, as historically had been the case over much of the course of U.S. history.

This L.A. Times story offers some positive insights about refugees from around the world, including Africa and Asia, settling — and thriving — in rural America.

KJ