Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Luke Runyon/Harvest Public Media
In a small Colorado farm town, immigrants accept America’s least popular jobs. Now the town is helping them gain citizenship.

When you hear that immigrants are important to a farm town, you probably think of farm labor. But farm towns, like other small towns in America, struggle to find workers for many grueling jobs citizens don’t want.

Now the town of Brush, Colorado, is offering help to its new residents to become citizens themselves.

This Harvest Public Media report by Luke Runyon, broadcast on National Public Radio, explains.

“At the public library in the rural Morgan County town of Brush, Colo., Marissa Velazquez welcomes her students to class. It’s a sunny Saturday morning, and the day marks the halfway point in Velazquez’s class, a 10-week crash course on American history, civics and English.

“Nearly all of the students work in either meatpacking or dairying. Everyone in it has the same goal: become an American citizen. In two hours, Velazquez runs through voting rights, the legislative process and some grammar tips. …

“Morgan County has anchored its local economy to agriculture. A meatpacking plant, cheese factory, sugar beet processing plant and large dairy farms provide plentiful yet grueling jobs that require little proficiency in English, just hard manual labor. That has made the rural county a magnet for migrating immigrants and refugees. It now holds sizable Somali, Mexican, Ethiopian, El Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran populations. …

“In some smaller towns … fear has spurred some to take steps to go from green card holders to fully fledged citizens.

“The number of people who applied for U.S. citizenship rose across the country in 2016. And while there are no definitive data for the first part of 2017, there are small indications that the same trend could be continuing this year.

“To become naturalized, applicants are tested with a series of questions about the U.S. They are given a dictation exam and an interview, most often in English.

” ‘That’s why we get to practice listening skills, writing skills, reading, so that they’re ready for when they go in for their interview to become a citizen,’ Velazquez says.

” ‘I never thought I would teach the class, because I took this class as a student,’ says Velazquez, who became a naturalized citizen in 2016.

“Citizenship classes are pretty standard in some parts of the country, often offered by nonprofit groups and immigration law firms. What makes this one unique is its size. In 2015, 10 people finished it. In 2016, just five. This year, Velazquez has a class of 21 students. In a rural area like Morgan County, that is huge.” More.

One thing you can say about immigrants who take those tough jobs: they work hard. I believe that the country is strengthened by people like that deciding to become part of it.