By Art Cullen, Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 12, 2024
My folks floated over the pond with the cattle down below in steerage. One was an indentured servant, another a prison guard, others were among an army of Irish who helped drive the Native people off the Mississippi River near Dubuque to claim the lead mines. Still another branch settled the sloughs around Emmetsburg about the time the last Dakota were being driven out.
Immigrants. Good and not so good. The Mulroney brothers were not a welcome sight to the existing indigenous people when Fort Dodge was still a fort.
It cannot be avoided. It’s who we are, a nation of immigrants determined to write a new story for ourselves: That we came by it all fair and square; we did not. That we earned it; we stole it. And now that we are in control, we would rather keep others out. Until we need the cheap labor.
Repetition is the key to advertising or propaganda. Immigrants are bad. Poison. Criminals. Diseased. Depraved. You forget your own story in the flood of lies about who we are. They take on a veneer of truth when the cable news reminds you 24/7 that aliens are overwhelming us.
So the facts bear repeating.
This is Storm Lake, rich with immigrants from around the world. The town builds new schools with strong voter support. St. Mary’s Catholic Church is revitalized by Latinos. Mexican artists are putting up another mosaic mural, this time at Buena Vista University. They work hard at Tyson, producing pork and turkey zipping past on a line that goes faster for your meat budget.
Lake Avenue is full with food fare that can sate any palate. Immigrants have built carpentry, electrical and plumbing businesses. Their children perform in the school plays, excel on the soccer and football fields, and hope to attend Buena Vista University. Immigrants are firefighters and nurses, school board and city council members, and community volunteers.
A few get in bar fights, as if the Irish did not. Immigrants commit crimes at no greater rate than whites do.
Most of us in Storm Lake have grown used to the polyglot. Many of us revel in it. The City Beautiful is a more interesting place than it was when it was all-white. When I was a kid, the town was relatively more prosperous with union meat cutters and independent farmers. It is a richer place in that we now have a Buddhist temple. It was the system, not the immigrants, that cut the working man’s wages in half through the decades. Mexicans did not snuff out the independent pork producer.
Storm Lake is growing with immigrants while two-thirds of rural Iowa is shrinking and decaying. They say there is no room for more while vacant school buildings are razed and homes rot out. Look around. There is room in Clinton, Keokuk and Newell.
Nearly everyone around here knows that livestock production and processing simply would not happen without immigrants in the poultry barn and on the kill floor. They could not have built the transcontinental railroad that plundered the Native people without the Irish and Chinese. The railroad laid Storm Lake with the help of Abe Lincoln’s law firm. The packinghouses were laid by the tracks. The Irish and Chinese were relieved by Latinos and Lao and Africans. Poor whites were and are told, over and over, that the person who talks funny or has darker skin stole your franchise, in order for you to keep fighting them and not the money that has a gun to your head.
Donald Trump cannot claim that the economy is a wreck when wages are rising and interest rates are falling. He wants immigration to be the issue that stokes fear.
Storm Lake is a reality check. We have our problems, but imagine what they might be without our new neighbors. Perry is about to find out when Tyson closes. How much would you miss their money? They pay taxes and contribute to Social Security. Their cousins are not sneaking through — they present themselves as castoffs at the border and beg mercy from Lady Liberty.
Our governor keeps sending National Guard soldiers and state troopers to Texas ostensibly to keep refugees out. Yet we need them. We need their resolute determination to work — anyone who would walk from Ecuador to El Paso to find freedom is the sort of neighbor you want. The most patriotic people I know are immigrants. You love freedom when you have witnessed Communist or religious oppression first-hand.
Immigrants have been good for Storm Lake, for sure as it stands today. The Browns are Irish, the Dvergstens Norwegian and the Schallers originally hail from Alsace-Lorraine. Now they own three Storm Lake banks and help newcomers start a new life like their ancestors did. Someday, one of those people might end up owning a bank themselves. It really happens. That’s America. That’s Storm Lake. Amid the propaganda that you must fear the “other,” it bears repeating as much as the lies: The “other” is us.
The Siouxland Observer 
You are right. LEGAL immigrants are not the problem. Our country is filled with wonderful immigrants old and new. Sadly our government has a huge issue that needs to be fixed. Our son’s girlfriend who is Thai cannot even get a visitors visa to visit and meet his family. She was denied by our embassy twice. Many of his friends complain about how hard it is to get a visa just to visit and tour the US. They are engaged now and she can apply for a lengthy, complicated 90 day fiance visa and they can get married here and she can get a green card. If they get married in Thailand first she still has to apply as a visitor and then apply for a green card which can take years….making her still unable to visit until she gets one. The immigration problem and issue we have now at the border is the fact that thousands are coming here, some funded by the cartels to whom they become indentured. Some are known terrorists and known criminals. They come from around the world. Our open border and the illegal migration is a huge issue. We have been warned by people who know what is happening. I have family in Texas and Arizona. If a country does not have secure borders it ceases to exist at some point. No other country in the world is allowing what is happening. Not Thailand. Not anywhere! This isn’t propaganda. The ones spewing propaganda are the Trump haters denying the issues. I like some of your articles but clearly you are biased which is not what the reading public needs.
Sorry you don’t like what I post. Nobody is forcing you to read the stories. Please feel free to read something more suitable for your political leanings, like from a MAGA writer.
Can’t agree. Lived in Storm Lake for 15 years……it is not what it once was. Sorry if this does not follow the agenda.
Not sure what agenda you are talking about, Brad. It sounds like you don’t like change, though.
Hi Gary, I replied but not sure you received it. Thank you.
I replied to it yesterday, Margaret.
Thank you. I had seen that and attempted to reply but it didn’t seem to go through. I was just disappointed that your comment appeared to blow me off instead of trying to come to some common ground understanding of the issues and the reality of the crises our country truly faces at the border. I hate it, yes hate is a strong word, when someone uses labels such as MAGA as pejoratives. Or assumes because I am the kind of person who focuses on all different angles of a news story that I am a Trump loving, far right conservative. I have never, ever cared for Trump’s public persona. I tend to watch more BBC these days rather than FOX, due to politics being the main focus these days, to get my news from a more global perspective. I try to tune into MSNBC and CNN but I don’t care for many of their on-air personalities and they are very definitely left leaning with trying to find little common ground with half the country. At least FOX focuses on having both left and right opinions and dialog in much of their programming. I watched Anderson Cooper do a hit piece on St. Joseph’s Indian School one time and it was awful. I worked there for 9 years and know many of the people who have dedicated their lives to working there. He got things so wrong and impacted their donations for a while. Fortunately, people have short memories and the news moves on to other topics. All that said, when I go to vote I prefer to vote based on the party platform that most aligns with my values. I believe in common sense and absolute truths whether they are comfortable or not.
I am an immigrant to the USA. I am in my 26th year here.
The immigration system is messed up. Margaret’s son’s fiancé wants to visit his family in the USA, she is denied. People from Central America want to come and do some of the hardest jobs in the economy, they are denied. Very, very few people are allowed. Even highly educated and skilled immigrants wait more than 10 years for their green card to be approved, depending on their home country.
This is not the immigrants’ fault. If there was a legal process they would follow it.
Until there is a legal avenue, it will continue to be chaotic.
(By the way, Margaret’s son is lucky… he can marry his fiancée in Thailand and she can have her green card in 6 months. Or she can do the complicated fiancée visa. Most people don’t have ANY avenue they can follow to do things legally. So many of my US-born friends don’t understand this. There is no legal avenue for most people.)