From Hate to Home

COMMENTARY

How one Nebraska small town had its own Springfield, Ohio, panic in 2010, and everything turned out fine.

The public conscience quaked during the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former-President Donald Trump, when the latter repeated a hoax about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Sadly, this sort of anti-immigrant rhetoric is not new. 

In fact, these sorts of narratives are not new even in modern Midwestern history. In June 2010, the town of Fremont, Nebraska, faced a similar conversation. The town of 25,000 people (at the time) voted to enact a local ordinance that banned landlords from renting property to undocumented immigrants. The measure also cracked down on businesses hiring undocumented immigrants. The ordinance was almost completely fueled by misinformation, rather than by facts, as the reality was that 4.4% of the town’s population was foreign born, compared to the national figure at the time of 12.6%.

14 Years Since the Ordinance

After years of court battles and practical issues with implementation, the Fremont ordinance has largely been considered toothless. As someone raised in Fremont who visits the town for family on a weekly basis, the eye test tells a different story than the one anti-immigrant advocates foresaw in 2010. The town population has grown, and its immigrant population (both documented and undocumented) is a massive reason for it. Immigrants of different or no statuses have found ways to make a home and a living in Fremont.

What’s more, the town now seems to not only tolerate immigrants, it embraces them in ways I could have not imagined. In 2021, Fremont hosted its first annual Hispanic festival, an important milestone in celebrating the Guatemalan, Mexican, Salvadoran and Cuban heritage of many of its newest inhabitants. During the 2023 celebration, hundreds of immigrants of all national origins gathered in the downtown area to music festivities, with an overflow so large that partygoers convened at the top of a parking structure across the street from the courthouse. Aside from being a fun party, the phenomenon was symbolic of a total 180 for a town that once had a rigid relationship between leadership and its immigrant community.

There are also more immigrant-owned businesses, from stores and restaurants to blue-collar service providers. The economic contributions have become so prominent, that the town’s local chamber of commerce started a Spanish-speaking networking group.

Lessons Learned for Small-Town America

Amid the chaotic narratives that arose from the former president’s comments about dogs and cats, the journalists who probed the issue found no evidence of pet scavenging. Instead, they encountered much greater concerns.

They spoke to law enforcement who found the reports were not credible. It comes to the surprise of no one that public safety is greatest when those on the margins trust the communities they may need to rely on. Federal immigration policy acknowledges this to some extent, which is why there are immigration benefits to incentivize immigrant victims of certain crimes. By better understanding immigrant communities and their concerns, law enforcement can create positive relationships that reduce crime and bias.

They found local business owners who recognized that immigration has kept Midwest economies alive. Rural Midwestern life can be very attractive to immigrants, and Midwesterners should take that as a compliment. Many immigrants see affordable housing, interactive communities and the availability of agricultural work, and they want to take part. They buy homes, eat at local restaurants and have U.S. citizen children who will statistically make positive contributions. In communities that have suffered from losing their young people who have moved to larger cities, immigrants have found homes in the empty nests.

Finally, they have found concerned citizens who decry the reiteration of such hoaxes for leading to bomb threats in the community. I find it curious to hear anti-immigrant advocates talk about social unrest associated with “waves” of immigrant arrivals. Plainly, it is a blatant form of victim-blaming that stems of our collective failure to properly welcome immigrants. American communities will continue to see new arrivals of documented and undocumented individuals.

The choice we get to make is whether to welcome them or not.

Like any place in the United States, Fremont is far from perfect. Teachers privately acknowledge the need for the school system to properly manage its language needs, specifically for families who speak Spanish and indigenous Mayan dialects. There continue to be clear enclaves of specific neighborhoods in which immigrants have found community. But these problems are now more likely to be framed from the perspective of a community that wants to integrate, rather than exclude.

Weirdly, the town where I grew up experiencing casual racism now gives me a model for hope for the revival of other Midwestern small towns.

Ariel Magaña Linares is an attorney at Center for Immigrant & Refugee Advancement, Omaha. He can be reached on LinkedIn.