Making Minnesota Diverse

One hundred years ago twenty percent of the population of Minnesota was foreign-born, mostly from Germany and Norway. Now immigrants make up a smaller share--about nine percent, according to the American Community Survey. The greatest number come from Mexico and Somalia and settle in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where jobs and amenities are attractive to the many naturalized professionals among them. But, increasingly, lower-skilled people from the Northern Triangle of Central America are finding opportunity in the poultry farms and meat-packing facilities of rural areas.

That opportunity comes with a variety of challenges, from the need for accessible medical care to a lack of legal services. In Minnesota’s farmland the new arrivals do not find it easy to learn English and get assistance with translations.  Appreciation of the peace and quiet of a small town coexists with awareness that their neighbors may see them as intruders.

Three perspectives suggest the range of immigrant experience in small-town Minnesota—a survey of 25 families (112 respondents) conducted by the Economic Development Authority in Lake City, a Washington Post account of resentment in Worthington, and an essay by Cristina Ortiz, a professor at the University of Minnesota, that stresses the importance of advocates for the foreign-born in rural areas. A positive spin on the diversity of one small town (Willmar, population about 20,000) comes from Thomas Friedman in the New York Times.

Interested readers can find much more information at the Center for Rural Development. Minnesota graduate students have written an interesting report on research investigating how small-town officials are identifying issues and meeting challenges that local refugees and immigrants encounter.