Immigrants stopping population loss in parts of rural Kansas, but few are reaping benefits

LIBERAL — It’s 5 p.m. and Mario Tarango and his wife Maritza head to the back of their store, Tortilleria Tapacolmes, to make one more batch of a community staple in southwest Kansas: homemade tortillas.

Particles of masa and flour float through the air in the evening sunlight.

The couple form small discs of dough from the masa with water. Mario stands on a step stool over the stainless steel machine. He feeds the discs through the top, and fully cooked, pressed tortillas fly out of the chute and are placed in a stack.

While tortillerias are now frequently seen here, it wasn’t always that way in this part of Kansas.

In fact, their daughter Gisel, explained how her parents came to be in rural Kansas from a small town in Mexico.

“My parents came to Liberal around 20 years ago, right before I was born, actually,” Gisel said.

That immigration has redefined southwest Kansas over the past 40 years. The communities that have embraced their diversity have seen their population stabilize, bucking the trend of rural areas losing population. And this new diversity might end up being what saves these rural communities from deterioration.

But while those immigrants are helping the area thrive, they still face challenges when it comes to political representation and access to services.

Like many immigrants in the area, the Tarangos had family in rural southwest Kansas, and worked labor-intensive jobs. Mario in the oil industry and Maritza at National Beef, the meatpacking plant that is the financial heartbeat of the town.

Now, they are business owners of one of the town’s many tortillerias, a market that specializes in homemade tortillas, fresh produce and household essentials.

Unlike the rest of the state, this part of Kansas is now predominantly Hispanic. Rural Kansas is usually defined by what it lacks, but one thing this part of the region has plenty of is diversity.

“We do have a lot of different cultures here, so we try to add products from multiple countries from Latin America,” Gisel said.

In Seward County, 30% of the population was born outside of the United States, like the Tarangos.

Meatpacking moved to cattle country

The immigrant story in this part of Kansas has been developing for decades. In the 1980s, meatpacking plants moved out of urban areas and relocated closer to cattle. They also wanted to escape unions and move to “right-to-work” states, which refers to a state that has a law prohibiting union security agreements.

The industry set its sights on Liberal, Garden City and Dodge City. This formed what people in the area call the Golden Triangle of meatpacking plants, which relied on immigrants and refugees for labor.

Don Stull, retired anthropology professor for the University of Kansas, spent 30 years studying the effects the meatpacking industry had on rural communities like Garden City.

“They needed to attract those kinds of industries in order to reverse population declines and economic challenges,” Stull said.

Now those three meatpacking towns are some of the only rural communities here that are not projected to see major population declines in the coming decades. As rural Kansas ages and fewer young people return home after college, these counties in western Kansas could see sharp population drop offs. But researchers say immigration can reverse this trend.

Finney County is a place where people of color outnumber the white population. The county is expected to grow by 18% over the next 50 years. Compare that to neighboring Lane County, which is mostly white. That county’s population is projected to decrease by nearly half in the next 50 years.

Cultural shift in leadership

With the diversification of the population there are starting to be cultural shifts. Garden City and Liberal now have two people of color on their respective city commissions.

Kathleen Alonso is a civic engagement coordinator for the nonprofit New Frontiers. She was encouraged to run for local office after seeing the community embrace the majority minority, electing two Hispanic people to the city commission. Her campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but she said the trend continues.

“I've seen a lot more people that look and speak like me in more positions of power,” she said.

Alonso knows all too well the struggles of an immigrant in rural Kansas. She grew up in a place lacking resources for children that looked like her, despite most of the children looking like her by 2010.

“I had to translate for my parents, documents with my teachers and all that stuff,” Alonso said. “My mom was deported when I was 16, so immigration issues are really dear to my heart.”

Immigrants not only support the economy through meatpacking, but now they provide essential services, like health care, education and grocery stores. And major organizations like schools and churches are starting to adapt.

Jonathan Zamora is a pastor for Crosspoint, an English-speaking Christian church in Liberal. His parents came to southwest Kansas from Nicaragua to seek work and education opportunities in the late 1980s.

Zamora has used his parents’ experiences to guide how he leads his church, reaching out to the Latino community and offering them leadership positions within the church.

“As our community changes, organizations have to change, too, and our church needed to change,” Zamora said.

Economic impact

And this part of the state might be ahead of the curve. Research from the Center of Rural Innovation found rural America has become more diverse over the past decade. These agriculture-dependent areas still rely heavily on labor-intensive jobs.

Jeremy Hill, with the Center of Economic Development and Business Research, said immigrants in western Kansas drive the economy, and boost population by having more children.

“Communities in southwest Kansas had this wave of migration. They are younger families,” Hill said. “They have higher fertility rates.”

Beef processing contributes to $11 billion to the output of the state's economy. Employed primarily by immigrants, or children of immigrants, this brings more people and more money to rural areas.

That population stability and money also contributes to a higher quality of life, more businesses, more social services and a larger tax base.

But immigrants don’t necessarily get to reap some of those benefits they provide.

Barriers for immigrants

Janeth Vazquez, who was Liberal’s first Latina elected to the city commission in 2021, also works for the town’s hospital. She said there are still a lot of barriers for immigrants.

“They don't get the health care they need, because they're so busy working that they don't prioritize themselves,” Vazquez said.

Seward County, where Vazquez lives, also the most Hispanic county in the state, has the lowest rates of adults with health insurance, according to the Kansas Health Institute.

Vazquez said affordability, cultural stigmas and eligibility due to legal status are barriers to health insurance for immigrants in southwest Kansas, despite their major contributions to the economy that supports the health care system.

“I hope this sends a message to the rest of the state that immigrants are good for our economy. They're actually vital to our economy,” Vazquez said.

Outside of health, there is also the issue of representation. Despite some of these towns having many people from Latin America, the city commissions, school boards and decision makers do not always reflect that.

In Dodge City, Alejandro Rangel-Lopez noticed this. He works for New Frontiers, an extension of Loud Light, a civic engagement group in Kansas.

Rangel-Lopez is suing Dodge City, arguing the at-large local election system dilutes the Latino vote, making it harder for those communities to get a say in local politics.

In Dodge City, just over an hour away from Liberal, 59% of the voting age population is Hispanic. Yet, Rangel-Lopez said that the town hasn’t seen a Latino candidate win an election since 2000. Currently, Dodge City’s school board and city commission don't have any Hispanic members.

But Rangel-Lopez still has a soft spot for his hometown, and that’s why he wants to continue pushing for changes.

“I encourage others to take pride and take ownership in the communities that we call home that we were born in. We're not visitors,” Rangel-Lopez said. “We're here to stay.”

Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Immigrants are stopping population loss in parts of rural Kansas