Latinos are welcome in Iowa

Thank you, Timothy Walch, for your timely, crucial, and apropos guest column June 24 that showcases “Meatpacking America,” a new book by a professor of religious studies at the University of Iowa, Kristy Nabhan-Warren. I too have read this chronicle of the resilience of Iowans and their welcoming of potential and proven very skilled immigrant laborers to our state’s meatpacking plants.

An article in The Washington Post appeared at the same time, “A rural county in Iowa that supported Trump turns to Latinos to grow,” May 14. It recounts how Iowa’s Greene County “is sinking into a demographic hole” with waning residents. There “factories have dozens of job openings, schools have closed, and villages are crumbling. Deaths have outpaced births for so long that the hospital stopped delivering babies.”

This issue is not unique to Greene County. Other rural Iowa counties are experiencing the same situation “where falling birthrates, an aging population and an exodus of young people to the cities have depleted the population.” Greene County’s solution? This mostly white, mostly Republican stronghold has concluded that the only way to grow is to recruit Latino residents. What a contrast to Iowa’s Republican leadership’s thoughtless quip about Latinos coming to Iowa: “That’s the president’s problem.”

William Mulcahey

Cedar Rapids