WEDNESDAY, AUGUSGT 18, 2021 - CENSUS CONTINUED

 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2021 - CENSUS CONTINUED

I’ve been looking at the Census this week.  

From Nebraska TV (https://nebraska.tv/news/local/rural-population-losses-add-to-farm-and-ranch-labor-shortage-08-15-2021)

“Rural America lost more population in the latest census, highlighting an already severe worker shortage in the nation's farming and ranching regions and drawing calls from those industries for immigration reform to help ease the problem.

The census data released last week showed that population gains in many rural areas were driven by increases in Hispanic and Latino residents, many of whom come as immigrants to work on farms or in meatpacking plants or to start their own businesses.

“We’ve struggled on this issue for a long time to try to come up with a more reasonable, common-sense approach,” said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, which is part of a group lobbying Congress for new immigration laws. Vilifying immigrants "just makes it harder to get there.”

The population trend is clear in Nebraska, where only 24 of the state's 93 counties gained residents. Of those 24, just eight reported an increase in the white population, suggesting that most of the growth was driven by minorities, said David Drozd, a research coordinator for the University of Nebraska Omaha's Center for Public Affairs Research.”

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Okay, so the population of the United States is: (a) growing older; (b) becoming more urban; (c) and less white.  What might that mean?

(Yes, this is Karen’s speculation)

AGRICULTURE (the quotation from Nebraska TV suggests that farming and ranching are going into a crisis in terms of labor.  The kids that grew up on farms and ranches are moving into towns for a different life.  I experienced that when teaching at Dakota State University.  I had good students from rural settings who went into computing fields.  Citibank (and others) hired them because they had great work ethics.  As children of farmers and ranchers, they were used to getting up for chores early in the mornings before going to school.  They need the process of seeing jobs through (such as raising 4-H cows or other 4-H projects).  I kidded about my first teaching position that my biggest discipline problem was the kids who milked cows before coming to school (and not cleaning or changing their manure-covered boots!!).  

BUT, who is going to plant the corn, beef the cows, pigs, and livestock. We already object to chicken farming, where the chickens barely see the sun and are raised to go to market quicker.  Farms and ranches already are technology-based. Those expensive tractors beam data back and forth from satellites about field conditions and the “cloud computing” (almost an appropriate name) does the analysis for more (or less) fertilizer or weed killing or watering.  Maybe the day when self-driving vehicles will mean tractors, combines, and farm machinery!!!  

And, many of our food packing plants are already using immigrants.  The packing plants near my son in Nebraska have many Somali workers (as traditional white workers don’t want to work in packing plants - it is “underneath them).  And, Somali workers in Grand Island Nebraska do attract attention.  They want time off to offer their Islamic prayers and have mosques.  That is foreign to the White Americans of central Nebraska.

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Another problem is the aging situation.  With good health care (at least for white people), many are living longer.  That may mean more senior housing, more health care providers for seniors, more assisted living facilities.  Who is going to work those minimum wage jobs in the nursing homes - changing bedpans, and taking care of the old and infirm?

Will Somalis take care of Grandma and Grandpa?  (Maybe not).  Maybe there will be a preference for Hispanic workers in those jobs?  Can robots take care of seniors?  

Will there be more medical personal?  YES - and many will come from non-white backgrounds.  My friend who is having cancer surgery next week is under the care of an Indian-American (not a Native American).  My nurses were almost all not the traditional health care providers my parents had.  

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With the move to urban areas, will those small farming communities die out?  Will there be a doctor for Howard South Dakota?  Will there be grocery stores in Howard?  

And, then you have the urban sprawl issues.  I’m in a suburb of Austin Texas.  Austin is growing so fast that housing has rapidly gotten expensive.  The house we bought for about $190K eight years ago is now comparatively priced at about $500K.  The roads get crowded, the schools are full and there is a need for more schools.

And, the rural areas are consolidating schools.  Can a student in Howard South Dakota get a high school physics class?  Yes, but it might be online from a regional consortium. The Howard District might not have enough students to employ a physics teacher.

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So, yes, America took a census, and (quoting Bob Dylan) “The times they are a-changing”.   This is not the America of 1921 or 1821 but in a whole different era.  

Can we remember “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

(Emma Lazarus - The New Colossus - inscribed on the Statue of Liberty!!!)

And, above all, LOVE WINS!!  Love those Somalis working in the packing plants, Love those Hispanics, Indians (not Native Americans) working in Health Care, love those building the new suburbs and housing all around Austin (many of which are Hispanic laborers), love the Taliban, love the Chinese, Russians, and all.  Do we have any choice but to love?  (Answer, yes, we can hate - but that is like cancer on our soul).

HUGS!!

Karen