The New American's Dream

America is a cultural melting pot, and there is no doubt about it. It’s been melting for so long, that many of the separate ingredients have melded together, as tends to happen in such pots. So much in fact, that social scientists Patrick J. Carr and Maria Kefalas take cultural origins into little or no account in the introduction to their book, titled Hollowing out the Middle. It may sound dramatic, but that is exactly the topic the book covers; what Carr and Kefalas call the “rural youth exodus”: the mass migration of youth leaving the geographic center of the country, something that the authors cite as a huge problem for America as we know it. To Carr and Kefalas’s data, however, a Polish grandfather, African descent, or Mexican parents make no real difference, as there is no proof of ancestry deciding which direction young adults will take on their way out of high school. Of course, it doesn’t take studies to be able to tell that in reality, small-town America is not free of racial or cultural bias. As a melting pot, the influx of “ingredients” into the pot has not slowed in the least, in fact it has increased from 5.4% of the U.S. population being legal immigrants in 1960, to a staggering 13.7% in 2018, according to extensive research done by the Pew Research Center. Pew also states that in 2018, half of all foreign-born residents of the U.S. were from Latin America, including 25% from Mexico (Budiman). Besides the occasional mention of rural America’s tedious relationship with immigrants of all kinds, Carr and Kefalas’s introduction largely avoids the topic. The role of almost 14% of the nation’s population in these supposedly cataclysmic shifts is left unaddressed. And, like almost every other citizen of a nation, the effect that 44.8 million people have on their home country is equal and opposite to the effect that same country’s economy has on them. Just as so many people come here seeking to change their fortunes, our own internal struggles undoubtedly have some sway of their own on those fortunes. Sure, all the small town, hoedown farm kids are growing up with great aspirations of big cities, but what about the massive amounts of people who work so hard just to have the life that these “kids” are running away from? Admittedly, Carr and Kefalas’s aim is not to address this specific subset of people, but the rural youth exodus that they address is a highly complicated event. Like any other intricate machine, one small gear is all it takes to be set in motion, or one missing to be slowed down.

The number 44.8 million only considers legal immigrants, the ones who have a much higher chance of transplanting in rural America than the roughly 10.7 million illegal immigrants (Budiman). Politics aside, legal documentation makes it much easier for someone moving to America to settle down, and such has been the case in America since the 1990’s. According to Sherrie Wang of the nonprofit news organization Civil Eats, “immigrants accounted for 37 percent of overall rural growth from 2000 to 2018” (Wang). The reasons why aren’t hard to see. Both plights of rural America, as described by Carr and Kefalas: the shift from agriculture to industry as well as the disappearance of future labor for said industry, leave open gaps which many newcomers to the country are happy to fill. It’s a classic case of empty pockets in a nation's population being filled by a group for whom the move is a step upward. To quote the Pixar classic film Robots, “See a need, fill a need.” In respectful imitation of Carr and Kefalas, I call this specific group the Newcomers. Although this surge in immigration may indeed be the saving grace of many small towns, that fact may be hard to swallow, and it can be predicted that many a gift horse will be looked in the mouth. Carr and Kefalas describe the exact reasoning for such animosity towards outsiders aptly, saying that “these anxieties reflect fears of changes looming on the horizon; small-town dwellers are frightened of losing what they know, and anxious that the things they hold dear will disappear and that no one but them will even care” (Carr and Kefalas 17). How exactly a transition such as this one might go is a hefty question, and one that I am inclined to believe we will see an answer to within the next thirty years. Whether they are accepted or not, immigrants not only help fill vacant jobs, but also have the ability to boost a local economy, to a point where the differences made by the “youth exodus” is almost unnoticeable.

Although the solution may seem easy enough, the truth is, of course, much more complicated. Eduardo González, Jr., the State Diversity Specialist at Cornell University, states that there are between 1 and 3 million people in America who classify as migrant workers: farm workers who travel across the country, taking whatever work they can get, which is often minimum wage farm work. Not all of these workers reside permanently within the U.S., and if they do, they often don’t settle down long enough in one place to have the same effect on local economies as the more permanent Newcomers. Here once again, politics rears its disfigured head in the form of legal and illegal immigration. Many migrant workers are not in fact in the U.S. legally, a whole 52%, according to González. “‘The Farm Bureau has said that they need about two million farm workers in order for them to be able to do everything that is required in the agricultural industry,’ immigration attorney Jose Perez told The Politic. ‘Do you know how many visas are actually issued for migrant workers? Not even 200,000’” (Wang). This further distances many immigrants from the possibility of settling down, and in turn benefiting greatly both their own situations and that of a dying rural America. These migrant workers--we’ll call them Movers--contribute greatly to the continuation of agricultural industries, but they are not able to contribute on the same level to ensuring the survival of the small towns that are so symbolic of those same industries.

Many families of both Newcomers and Movers find themselves settling into a completely new environment, much in the same way the immigrants who founded this country did. They’re there, for better or for worse. Some buy houses, others buy only enough groceries to last a week or two of harvest. In both cases, their children are often sent to the local public school, some for the whole thirteen years, others for only a month here and a month there. Many of these children inevitably find themselves as a gear in the intricate machine which Carr and Kefalas studied and documented, and some may even fit nicely into Carr and Kefalas’s constructed groupings. Some may find that they’re Seekers, or Leavers, or even Stayers. These children fall into the same pattern that their forebearers offset by moving in and filling jobs. Even if their new homes might be slow in accepting the fact, immigrants can change the fate of what we nostalgically call the Heartland of America, all in a single generation. Here, at the bottom of the melting pot, one question remains, as it has throughout the history of this continent. Where is the dividing line between the Newcomers and the Stayers? Is there a specific amount of time required to be considered a “native”? Do you have to know a certain number of backroads like the back of your hand? Who is this rural youth, and do they really spell the end of quintessential Americana as we know it? Maybe quintessential Americana is due for a revamp.

Works Cited

Budiman, Abby, et al. “Immigrants in America: Key Charts and Facts.” Pew Research Center's

Hispanic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 28 Aug. 2020,

www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/.

Carr, Patrick J., and Maria Kefalas. “The Heartland and the Rural Youth Exodus.” Hollowing out

the Middle: the Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America, Beacon Press, 2011.

Ganzel, Bill. “Modern Immigration – New Rural ‘Ellis Islands.’” Modern Immigration to Rural

America, Wessels Living History Farm, 2009,

livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/life_13.html.

Gonzalez, Eduardo. “Migrant Farm Workers: Our Nation's Invisible Population.” Diversity

Equity and Inclusion, Cornell University, 9 Oct. 2019,

copdei.extension.org/migrant-farm-workers-our-nations-invisible-population/.

Wang, Sherrie. “A New American Dream: The Rise of Immigrants in Rural America.” Civil

Eats, Civil Eats, 2 Apr. 2019,

civileats.com/2019/03/22/a-new-american-dream-the-rise-of-immigrants-in-rural-america

/.