For most of the last 40 years, the “golden triangle” of southwest Kansas meatpacking towns — Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal — have thrived and grown while most other rural communities across the state struggled to survive.
If Donald Trump keeps his promises, that prosperity could take a hit, along with hitting the dinner tables of Kansas Citians.
We’ll have to see how his policies affect the meatpacking plant Walmart plans to open in Olathe next year.
Those meatpacking plants are built on a foundation of migrant labor: Latinos mostly, but also Africans and a lot of other newcomers from across the world.
Trump’s vows to deport millions of undocumented migrants — to be carried out by the American military, no less — threaten that foundation.
Naturally, there’s a bit of disquiet in the region.
“I think there are some people that are still, hopefully, optimistic, and there’s people that are really concerned,” said Debbie Snapp, the executive director of Catholic Charities of Southwest Kansas.
I have a small personal connection to this story.
Back in 1981, when I was 7, my parents packed up the family and moved to Garden City for my dad’s job at the brand-new Iowa Beef Processors plant in nearby Holcomb.
We were there at the dawn of the region’s cultural and economic transformation.
Back then, I recall, it was mainly Vietnamese migrants who arrived to fill many of the line jobs — as well as our churches and classrooms.
There were so many newcomers that some arrivals had to sleep in their cars while new housing was built.
These days, Snapp told me, a lot of the fresh faces are Cuban and Haitian.
Her agency served approximately 1,500 “new arrivals” during the most recent fiscal year.
The face of migration to the region tends to evolve over time, often reflecting whichever part of the world is most in distress at any given moment.
