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A newspaper 1,200 miles away opens our eyes to our neighbors

Subhead
Ruminations
Lead Summary
By
Mavis Fodness, reporter

Thirty years ago I was a junior reporter at the Worthington Daily Globe.
I remember well the changing demographics of the then community of almost 10,000 residents.
There was considerable skepticism and unfriendly bias toward the darker-skinned immigrants wanting to call Worthington home. The state provided grants to the community intended to bring new and old residents together.
It appears the immigration that I saw in the late ’80s and early ’90s has only increased.
Worthington is now a growing community of 13,000.
A Sept. 22 story in the Washington Post put a spotlight on the turmoil today that has only grown with Worthington’s population.
According to the Washington Post reporter, Worthington is a popular immigrant destination, and more unaccompanied children are moving there than anywhere else.
Thirty years ago they came from Ethiopia and Laos, but immigrants today are from Guatemala and Honduras.
The children’s move to Worthington has caused a surge in school enrollment at a time when most communities are experiencing steady or declining populations.
The newspaper article cited a report by the Office of Refugee Resettlement that revealed more than 400 unaccompanied immigrant minors have been placed in Worthington since 2013, the second-most per capita in the country. No. 1 is Texas County, Oklahoma.
The Post reporter interviewed local immigrants, officials within Worthington, the churches and schools, opponents to the upcoming school bond referendum, politicians and local residents.
One resident, a farmer, shared his resentment of paying higher taxes to support Worthington’s education system. He is adamantly against the possible school facility building expansion to house the children who immigrated to Worthington and want to learn.
He appears in the article as unfriendly and resentful to immigrants, and the children have no business being in the community. He thinks they should be sent back home.
Interviews with the immigrants find that the youngsters fled their homelands due to violence or extreme poverty, and as teenagers they want to go to school — some of them for the first time in years.
The Washington Post article exposed a nerve, and I don’t have all the answers. I do believe we need new people to become homeowners, to fill job openings, to fill our schools with the next generation of students.
Our small communities are dwindling and maybe these new immigrants are the answer to rejuvenate and preserve the towns and schools our great-grandparents started.
We just need to be open to the idea of new residents and show a little compassion to those who may not have had as good an upbringing as our own.

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