The Mexican Revival of Small-Town America

[Judi Lynn]

By Alfredo Corchado
Mr. Corchado is the Mexico border correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.

June 2, 2018




A view of Kennett Square, Pa. “Mexicans are leaving, and that’s bad news for everyone,” an employer said.
Credit Craig Warga/Bloomberg, via Getty Images

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. — Amid all the anti-immigrant fervor, nativists have overlooked a fundamental fact: In recent years, Mexican immigrants and their Mexican-American offspring have been rescuing the most iconic places in America — its small towns.

In the past 10 years, the number of Mexican immigrants living in the United States has declined by more than one million; some left by choice but tens of thousands more left through deportation. Americans who dream of an America without Mexicans should consider Kennett Square.

A town of more than 6,000 people, about an hour outside Philadelphia, Kennett Square proudly calls itself the mushroom capital of the world. The $2.7 billion mushroom industry in southeastern Pennsylvania employs 10,000 people. On New Year’s Eve, Kennett Square drops a bright mushroom cap. These days the festivities are overshadowed by fear.

“Mexicans are leaving, and that’s bad news for everyone,” Chris Alonzo, president of Pietro Industries, one of the biggest mushroom companies, and a third-generation mushroom farmer, told me. “All the negativity, the fearmongering, the anti-immigrant feeling is hurting our small town. We’re seeing labor shortages, and that threatens the vibrancy of our community.”

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-mexican-revival-of-small-town-america.html

[dhill926]

1. trumplandia fucking itself over...

[Igel]

2. There's a prescribed response.

"They should pay a living wage, or a wage high enough to attract workers."

You know that problem with the Macedonia Republic not being admitted to the EU because Greece pitches a fit at the country's name? Makedonskata respublika?

During the first great migration that we know of, the Volkswanderung in the 7th and 8th century, not only did the Goths sack Rome and establish a kingdom in Spain (later overthrown by the Muslim invasion and oppression of the then-indigenous), but the Byzantine records show that the provinces of Dacia down through to the Greek islands were overrun by Slavic "invaders," now classed "economic migrants". It completely changed the ethnic nature of the Balkans. The Balkans were Thracian (an ethnonym claimed by the Albanians, not with complete fidelity to historical truth but with an eye to convincing the weak of mind); there were Dacians, already oppressed by Roman settlers. It produced a change in the base DNA of the Greek population, added hundreds of Slavic loanwords to modern Greek, and may well have helped trigger a Sprachbund in the area.

The Byzantines were team-loyal. They disliked invaders who would change their ethnic makeup, culture, government, and language.

[appalachiablue]

3. Interesting article with good info., thanks for posting.

'Thanks to President Ronald Reagan’s landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act, though, an estimated 2.7 million people were legalized beginning in 1986, enabling Mexicans and other immigrants to roam freely in greater numbers in search of opportunities.
In Kennett Square, instead of leaving as they had originally hoped, the men saw the value in an industry that provided year-round work. In rural America they saw the ideal place to raise a family.
Today, about half of Kennett Square’s residents are Hispanic, of whom an estimated 80 percent are Mexican, according to La Comunidad Hispana, which provides medical, educational and legal services for immigrants.
For more than three generations, the newcomers have contributed to the renewal of Kennett Square. Some Mexican immigrants have started their own mushroom farms. Some own hair salons...'