History of Immigration to Rural America

The influx of immigrants to rural areas is a result of economic and policy changes that have created new immigration flows

Research Summary

Americans often describe themselves as belonging to “a nation of immigrants,” drawing on shared histories and family stories of immigration. Early waves of European immigrants settled rural areas over two centuries of US expansion, while non-Europeans were marginalized (1;2). Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1884, and culminating in the 1924 National Origins Act, the federal government explicitly forbade immigration from Asia and severely limited non-European entries. After the end of the national quota system and the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, a new mass wave of immigration began, bringing people different from longer-term residents in language, ethnicity, race, and religion.

You can learn about recent immigrants country of origin and current residence via the interactive data tools at the Migration Policy Institute.

While most immigrants move to major metropolitan areas, since the 1990s, significant numbers of foreign-born people have moved to small towns across rural America. Rural communities had not hosted new immigrant residents in large numbers since before the 1924 Act, which made this change seem particularly noteworthy. Some rural residents reacted to newcomers with excitement and welcome, while others reacted with fear, apprehension, or ambivalence (3;4).

The largest group of new immigrants come from Mexico. Mexicans have long moved in and out of the United States following seasonal jobs, but their temporary status rendered them largely invisible to the residents of host towns (5;6;7;8;9). Those who settled before 1980 mostly lived in California, Texas, and Illinois. Since 1990, however, changing policies and economic opportunities drew Mexican immigrants to different states, where some of them settled in rural towns with little recent interaction with immigrants. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted many formerly undocumented migrant workers legal permanent residence. Combined with an economic recession and anti-immigrant sentiment in California, the freedom to live where they wanted motivated some Mexican-born people to seek out new destinations. Increased border control under IRCA also shifted entry points away from traditional gateway destinations, and made migrants more likely to settle down, since coming and going across the border became harder to do (8;10).

An abundance of jobs, especially in the meatpacking industry, drew many Mexicans and other newcomers to rural towns. Beginning in 1961, meatpacking shifted from being an urban, unionized sector to a de-unionized, rural industry closer to livestock. Economic restructuring and the high injury rate made meatpacking less attractive to U.S.-born workers, so employers increasingly turned to immigrant workers, some of them undocumented (11;12). Employers encouraged immigrants to recruit family and friends to work at the plants. The North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which decreased economic opportunities in Mexico, added to the ready supply of workers. The sudden increase of culturally distinct immigrant families drawn by new economic opportunities in the rural midwest and southeast made some long-term residents uneasy about perceived economic competition, uncomfortable with social changes, and upset about those without legal status (3;4;8).

In response to political pressure, the federal government stepped up immigration raids at meatpacking and other employers, deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers (13). Many employers turned to former refugees as replacement labor. While refugees are attractive to employers because they can legally work, their arrival brings still more cultural and religious diversity (14). News media in many rural towns widely report about these newcomers: sometimes in celebration, other times from concern (15;16;17;18;19). Little data and few comprehensive studies on secondary migration of refugees to rural areas exists.

Intended Audience

  • Law enforcement officials
  • Community organizers
  • Community leaders
  • Elected officials
  • Advocates

Related Projects

 Academic Debates

Scholars agree that economic and policy changes, along with social networks, shape new immigration to rural America. National level data and local level studies support this understanding (12). Scholars know less about how new immigrant destinations respond to recent immigration. While scholars find little evidence of concrete negative effects from immigrants’ presence, some residents express negative perceptions of immigrants (4;20;21;22). Scholars have devoted increasing attention to the racial tension between African-Americans and Latino immigrants in the rural South, where newcomers’ arrival complicates traditional binary race relations. Studies attend to perceptions that Latino’s arrival presents economic and social threats to African-Americans in particular (21;23).

 Public Debates

Some rural residents welcome new immigrants, as a source of young people and economic vigor (24). Others express prejudice, fear, or ambivalence. Negative attitudes towards new rural immigrants can be grounded in various concerns: that they take jobs from U.S.-born workers, commit crimes, weaken the sense of community, and generally cause social disorganization (4;22). Rural communities’ responses to new immigrants depend heavily on local context. Even in two nearby towns with similar economies, immigrant reception can be vastly different (22;25;26).

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Sources

1. Hirschman, Charles. “The Impact of Immigration on American Society: Looking Backward to the Future.” Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates, July 28, 2006, accessed July 30, 2015. http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Hirschman/.

2. Alba, Richard. “Looking Beyond The Moment: American Immigration Seen from Historically and Internationally Comparative Perspectives.” Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates, July 28, 2006, accessed July 30, 2015. http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Alba/.

3. Grey, Mark A. and Anne C. Woodrick. ““Latinos Have Revitalized Our Community”: Mexican Migration and Anglo Responses in Marshalltown, Iowa.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States ed. Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 133-154.

4. Fennelly, Katherine. “Prejudice Towards Immigrants in the Midwest.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 151-178.

5. Donato, Katharine M., Charles M. Tolbert, II, Alfred Nucci and Yukio Kawano. “Changing Faces, Changing Places: The Emergence of New Nonmetropolitan Immigrant Gateways.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 75-98.

6. Donato, Katharine M., Charles M. Tolbert, II, Alfred Nucci and Yukio Kawano. “Recent Immigrant Settlement in the Nonmetropolitan United States: Evidence from Internal Census Data.” Rural Sociology 72, no. 4 (2007): 537-559.

7. Lichter, Daniel T. and Kenneth M. Johnson. “Emerging Rural Settlement Patterns and the Geographic Redistribution of America’s New Immigrants.” Rural Sociology 71, no. 1 (2006): 109-131.

8. Massey, Douglas S., Chiara Capoferro. “The Geographic Diversification of American Migration.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 25-50.

9. Parrado, Emilio A. and Kandel, William. “New Hispanic Migrant Destinations: A Tale of Two Industries.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 99-123.

10. Durand, Jorge, Douglas S. Massey and Chiara Capoferro. “The New Geography of Mexican Immigration.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States ed. Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 1-20.

11. Broadway, Michael. “Meatpacking and the Transformation of Rural Communities: A Comparison of Brooks, Alberta and Garden City, Kansas.” Rural Sociology 72, no. 4 (2007): 560-582.

12. Kandel, William and Emilio A. Parrado. “Restructuring of the Us Meat Processing Industry and New Hispanic Migrant Destinations.” Population and Development Review 31, no. 3 (2005): 447-471.

13. Nowrasteh, Alex. “Interpreting the New Deportation Statistics” Cato Institute, January 5, 2015. accessed July 30, 2015. http://www.cato.org/blog/interpreting-new-deportation-statistics.

14. Capps, Randy and Kathleen Newland with Susan Fratzke, Susanna Groves, Gregory Auclair, Michael Fix, and Margie McHugh. The Integration Outcomes of U.S. Refugees: Successes and Outcomes. Washington D.C.: Migration Policy Institute, 2015. Accessed July, 2015. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/integration-outcomes-us-refugees-successes-and-challenges.

15. Associated Press, “In Iowa meatpacking town, Tyson’s decision to recruit Burmese refugees marks a new chapter,” Fox News, May, 05, 2013, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/05/05/in-iowa-meatpacking-town-tyson-decision-to-recruit-burmese-refugees-marks-new/.

16. David McLemore, “Refugees fill jobs in Cactus, Texas, after immigration sweep,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 2008, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/immigration/sweep.htm.

17. Kate Linthicum, “A modern tale of meatpacking and immigrants,” Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2010, accessed July 28, 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/28/nation/la-na-immigrant-nebraska28-2010jan28.

18. Nate Jenkins, “Africans bring new faces to Nebraska Towns,” USA Today, November 25, 2007, accessed July 28, 2015, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-25-africans_N.htm.

19. Sara Murray, “On the Killing Floor, Clues to the Impact of Immigration on Jobs,” The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013, accessed July 28, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324251504578580041922193264.

20. Crowley, Martha and Daniel T. Lichter. “Social Disorganization in New Latino Destinations?.” Rural Sociology 74, no. 4 (2009): 573-604.

21. Hernández-León, Rubén, and Víctor Zúñiga. “Appalachia Meets Aztlán: Mexican Immigration and Intergroup Relations in Dalton, Georgia.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States ed. Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 244-273.

22. Shutika, Debra Lattanzi. “Bridging the Community: Nativism, Activism, and the Politics of Inclusion in a Mexican Settlement in Pennsylvania.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States ed. Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 103-132.

23. Marrow, Helen B. “Hispanic Immigration, Black Population Size, and Intergroup Relations in the Rural and Small-Town South.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 211-248.

24. Carr, Patrick J., Daniel T. Lichter and Maria J. Kefalas. “Can Immigration Save Small-Town America? Hispanic Boomtowns and the Uneasy Path to Renewal.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 641, (2012): 38.

25. Donato, Katherine M., Melissa Stainback, and Carl L. Bankston III. “The Economic Incorporation of Mexican Immigrants in Southern Louisiana: A Tale of Two Cities.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States ed. Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 76-100.

26. Griffith, David. “New Midwesterners, New Southerners: Immigration Experiences in Four Rural American Settings.” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration ed. Douglas S. Massey, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 179-210.

Author(s)

Eleanor Worley