A survey of rural and urban Americans

Parent Cafe
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Survey:

https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/washington-post-kaiser-family-foundation-rural-and-small-town-america-poll/2217/

Articles:

http://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/the-kaiser-family-foundationwashington-post-survey-of-rural-america/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/rural-america/

Among other things, rural Americans are more likely to say that values of urban Americans are different or very different than urban Americans are to say that values of rural Americans are different or very different. Rural Americans are more likely to see immigrants as burdens on society, Christian values as being under siege, white people as losing out relative to black and Hispanic people, and that jobs/unemployment is the biggest problem in their communities.

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“Rural Americans are more likely to see immigrants as burdens on society, Christian values as being under siege, white people as losing out relative to black and Hispanic people, and that jobs/unemployment is the biggest problem in their communities”

– as I’ve said before, the people most worried about immigrants and changing “values” are the ones least affected by immigrants and changing values :slight_smile:

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Actually some small town areas have seen an influx of poor immigrants coming to take jobs at their plants where no skills are needed. Think of meat packing plants in middle America and farm labor. Many jobs the locals don’t want.

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Not necessarily true. Many rural areas of the country are in fact on the ‘front lines’ of illegal immigration (notably from Mexico in this example). Ranchers, small drug smuggling towns, etc… you can be sure that the people in these areas are the ones seeing the effects of illegal immigration before some upper-middle class professor working in San Francisco or Chicago… when these people lose family members or see their local communities turning for the worse due to illegal immigration, then hear urban people talk down to them, wondering why they are so intolerant (despite the fact that they themselves are 1,000 miles away, and not experiencing these problems!), it tends to rub them the wrong way…

And this happens a lot in our society, not just with immigration. The ones making the rules, or who have the power to influence the masses, often are shielded from the negative aspects of what they are proposing.

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@fractalmstr, can you give some more concrete examples of what you mean, of what is actually going on in rural areas? Thanks!

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Re: #3

Perhaps specific areas may have drug smuggling crime problems, though the result of question 4 in the survey indicates that rural Americans have (compared to urban Americans) a higher concern of drug abuse but lower concern of crime and immigration as the biggest problem in their communities.

Also, drug smuggling criminals are not necessarily illegal immigrants, although people’s tendency to profile by race and ethnicity may cause them to conflate the two groups. Also, it is rather likely that crime by illegal immigrants is lower than by citizens, based on some recent studies.

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" when these people lose family members or see their local communities turning for the worse due to illegal immigration, then hear urban people talk down to them, wondering why they are so intolerant (despite the fact that they themselves are 1,000 miles away, and not experiencing these problems!), it tends to rub them the wrong way…"

This is probably the view in rural areas, but what this boils down to is people see the ills that have hit rural areas, the declining economics, and more importantly, the surge in drug abuse (opiod addiction, meth), the social dislocation where families come apart and so forth, and they blame illegal immigrants for the problem rather than the real causes IMO. These areas have seen increases in crime, for example, but much of that is fed by drug use that is their own people so to speak, but it is a lot easier to duck that issue and blame it on others.

As far as professors in areas 1000 miles away, that is a load of BS that quite honestly is the old “bubble headed liberal elite in their limosines, what do they know?”. For one thing, it assumes they are looking from an ivory tower, when many of the people writing those things have gone ‘on the ground’ in rural areas and have seen what is going on. Likewise, arguing they don’t see it where they live is idiotic, the places where these guys teach, chicago and NYC, have been seeing immigration, legal and illegal, in numbers for a long time, people from Mexico I believe are now the largest group in NYC, and many of them are illegally here. In the burbs where I live, over the last 15 years or so we have seen large numbers of immigrants, many of them illegal, so we have faced these issues, issues like substandard housing (stacking, either in rooms in old houses or motels), issues of contractors using these guys as day laborers and abusing them, issues like when it is families, facing influxes of kids the schools weren’t equippred to handle (non english speaking kids, for example)… personally, when I hear “those ivory tower people don’t know what they are talking about”, it often comes down to 'they aren’t backing what my own eyes tell me", that often is based on misperceptions…

And yes, when it comes to things like illegal immigrants, there are real issues, something some wave aside, for example schools already strapped for resources dealing with waves of the kids of immigrants who need special help, issues of poverty, of government services, but a lot of the perceptions I have heard are repeating the claim that for example Mexican immigrants are criminals, rapists, taking ‘our jobs’ (mexican immigrants are not taking the factory jobs that have been lost, they are taking jobs no one else wants because they pay so poorly). While there is some truth to that claim, in construction cheaply paid day laborers have taken jobs that used to be well paying, as a blanket statement it is myth.

People in rural areas also traditionally have operated under the mythology that they are all rugged individualists, that the government gives them nothing but they give everything to the government, whereas the reality is rural areas often rely more on the federal government then the areas they claim get all the help…and likewise, where rural areas have done well, they often won’t/can’t attribute that success which may in large part come from federal actions shrug.

And this is nothing new, if you read any of Studs Terkels books, where he interviewed people from all over, none of this is new, this divide was there in the past, too, what once was the province of racial segregation and the ideas behind that, have shifted onto other things, where perception and mis perception and a perception rule, and where people don’t necessarily want to deal with the truth of things; better to blame illegal immigrants for the kid messed up on drugs, then the real causes of it.

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@musicprnt AMEN! Well stated!

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In my state, the rural population seems less conservative that the suburban population. Could this be from the “white flight” of the 50s and 60s? Those people didn’t flee all the way to the outer countryside.

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I’ve worked as a volunteer literacy teacher with immigrants by choice for over 25 years. I consider it a privilege and I am blessed by the people who have crossed my path. I believe I have helped them, and I know they have enriched me.

That said, being very involved in the immigrant community here in NYC, I can say with absolute certainty that the people like professors and other well-paid professionals are not impacted by the presence of illegal immigrants in their lives, unless we are talking about nannies and house keepers. Some stereotypes exist for a reason. Many of the illegal immigrants from Mexico, China, and Central America work in service jobs “off the books” and those are not jobs for the highly educated, and those are not the people that the affluent socialize with. However, if you speak with young people, particularly young black men, they can tell you that’s very, very, very difficult for them to get their first jobs because they are already taken by people who don’t follow the labor laws of this country.

I wouldn’t spend my time and money helping people if I didn’t believe in it and them, but among my great pet peeves in life is the fallacy that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. It is not. And the first victims are the immigrants, themselves, many of whom would have preferred to remain in their countries, communities, and climates, but have no real choice. we do them no favors by not being honest about that, and the truth of things is much more complicated than the usual accepted storyline.

It’s funny to object to some stereotypes while using others that work for a particular narrative.

The failure to hold racist kleptocracies accountable and to secure our borders has lots of victims, lots of bad guys, and very few people with clean hands. If you haven’t dealt with the actual human beings involved on all sides of the issue in a meaningful way, then you just don’t know, because the reality is both uglier and more beautiful than the talking points.

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@musicprnt Your derogatory tone towards rural people is really quite disturbing. It sounds as though you are basically saying these people don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their problems are strictly their own – that illegal immigration plays no part. Are your biases really that significant that you can’t even admit the situation is not so black and white?

Now, I will agree that the problems facing rural area are multifaceted… drug use, crime, etc caused by US residents is a problem (and likely the bigger source of the problem). But to dismiss the idea that illegal immigration causes ANY problems is simply delusional thinking, IMO.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45440385/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/along-mexican-border-us-ranchers-say-they-live-fear/#.WUgzBmeHp-E

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/border-insecurity-arizona-ranchers-frustrated-over-smugglers-crime-n106711

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Re: #10



However, most rural areas are not near the border where smuggling-related criminal activity tends to be high.

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@fractalmstr:


I didn’t say there were no problems with the illegal immigration from Mexico, obviously these are real cases of problems, but there is a big difference between what you reported here, and when you have the president of the US, for example, tweeting that Mexicans here illegally are all rapists and drug dealers…these are stories from the border areas, which I grant you are rural america, but what percent of rural america lives on the Mexican border? And more importantly, who is committing these crimes? Is it people looking to immigrate here, or is it drug runners and human traffickers and the like who are doing this?





Unless you want to claim that all the people in those surveys live on the Mexican border (and I will grant you there are problems there, the drug cartels especially are animals), then what I said stands, that people in rural aways away from the border are doing exactly what I said, they are blaming these immigrants based on false perceptions, that illegal immigrants bring with them crime, or they ‘take away our jobs’, when many of these jobs are in things like working in the fields or in meat processing plants or other low wage, dangerous jobs that are not the well paying jobs the people are bemoaning losing, illegal immigrants are not taking away factory jobs and the like…and according to crime statistics, it is not illegal mexican immigrants that have caused crime rates to soar in small town Ohio and indiana and the like, it is the drug epidemic that in turn is not illegal immigrants with the problem, it is the local people. I will tell you outright that if these people had come into the country legally and settled in the towns I am talking about, people would still blame them for everything, among other things, the places most complaining about illegal immigrants are from towns that are almost all white; I give more credence to the border towns in places like Arizona and their complaints because those areas already had a lot of hispanic background people, and they are complaining, too, like the park worker in one of the articles, this isn’t small town Indiana that have some of the highest drug addiction, new HIV infection rates and soaring crime, that were almost totally white. When faced with problems, people often rationalize away the truth, and are looking for someone else to blame, and in large parts of rural america they don’t want to admit that they are now the underclass shrug. I was reading an article the other day by Thomas Friedman, and it talked about companies in rural areas looking to hire, and they end up rejecting some ridiculous percent of the people applying for jobs, and I am talking expanding businesses paying decent wages, because of drugs, and the illegal immigrants aren’t responsible for that. It is kind of ironic, they interviewed several business owners and they said they would hire Mexican immigrants if they could, because the ones they can hire (who are legal), show up to work on time, give a hard days work, and rarely if ever test positive for drugs.








And like i posted, people in Rural areas have this mythology that they are the ones who pay for everything, are the ‘real america’ that is forced to pay for everyone else, whereas rural america in general depends a great deal on the government they blame for their problems…




And if people in rural areas know ‘the truth’, ie what is really going on, how come they can’t seem to figure out what ails them, things like a farmer worried about who will take on his farm because some of his children have died of drug addiction, others have been in and out of rehab…and the like? Sorry, but poll after poll when asked shows people in rural areas blaming others, doesn’t matter who, rather than looking at the real issues and figuring out how to fix them, and not only that, but realizing that the people they often talk about ‘those people on welfare’ for years they claimed were the root of all ills in this country, are now themselves, rather than pull together with people in the same boat and demanding change, they blame others, not wanting to recognize the real cause.



Studs Terkel had a brilliant interview with a man who had been a KKK grand dragon, and became a labor and civil rights activist, and when Terkel asked him why he had been a member of the klan, he said that he lived in a place where there was no education, what jobs there were no matter how hard they worked didn’t pay, where the local businessmen owned the town and workers had no rights, and people knew they had little hope for a better future. They turned to the KKK because they were told that if they worked hard and so forth, they could do well, and they couldn’t believe it was the system at fault, so instead they blamed blacks and jews for their problems. When Terkel asked him why he changed, he said he came to realize that blacks were in as bad or worse shape than he was, and the Jews had nothing to do with the greed and corrupt politcal culture that led to their problems…

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I’m guessing that some of the rural respondents just wonder why there are immigration laws in the first place if we don’t bother to enforce them. I certainly wonder that.

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And this mythology and anti-immigrant scapegoating goes back to the very beginnings of our Republic.





However, to be fair, this hasn’t always been a rural thing as there has been anti-immigrant movements in urban areas in the past as shown by the Know-Nothing movement in the 1850’s whose rhetoric is eerily similar to those of current anti-immigrant rhetoric…just switch the Mexicans, Muslims, and other current “undesirables” for the undesirables of that period…Irish Catholics. And the influx of Irish Catholics was viewed just as threateningly by the “real murikans”* of the period as current anti-immigrant rhetoric views Mexican/Latino and Muslim immigrants.








  • Just look at the period rhetoric about the perils of “Popery” they felt would follow the large influx of Irish Catholic immigrants in that period.
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“Rural Americans are more likely to see immigrants as burdens on society, Christian values as being under siege, white people as losing out relative to black and Hispanic people, and that jobs/unemployment is the biggest problem in their communities”



In my experience, actually listening to rural Americans and small business owners, on the most part they want jobs, practical solutions to problems, and a fair chance. In the case of small business owners, they also want tax laws and regulations that are simple enough that it is humanly possible for them to continue to run their businesses without hiring a full time lawyer and a full time accountant. There is a pragmatism here which seems to be pretty dominant in the views of the rural folks that I have talked to.



In my experience, people who lose their jobs are not happy that they have lost their jobs. This doesn’t make them “racist” or “xenophobic”, nor does it make them dumber than the upper middle-class professor who tries to tell them why the upper middle class professor knows what policies are best for them without having to listen to the out of work working-class and/or rural Americans.

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Just backing up what musicprnt is saying, one of our best friends owns a farm over in rural eastern Washington. Her entire staff and seasonal help is either Mexican or women over 50. Anyone else she has hired has a substance abuse/attendance issue or a poorly formed work ethic where they do roughly 1/4 the work output of a good worker. She has an uneasy relationship with many in her area because she has had to fire so many of their kids.

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Then they are deeply, DEEPLY misinformed on this topic.

We detain and deport hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants each year.

Also, I openly admit that I would never want to live in rural America again. Did it for a few months when Mr R and I started dating and vowed never to go back. Not my thing. I don’t particularly appreciate everyone knowing (and judging) my business if I haven’t personally shared it with them.

ETA: It is impossible for an illegal immigrant to “take” a job. It is the EMPLOYER who sees them as cheap labor and chooses to give them to an undocumented individual so that they don’t have to pay minimum wage.

People should be mad… but they are mad at the wrong people.

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Another thing to add is that one reason why there is illegal immigration is because the legal path to becoming a citizen is a massive red-tape filled bureaucratic nightmare unless one already has relatives in the states and is well-off.

It took my father ~2 decades to become a citizen after getting his green card because the INS kept losing documents and misdirecting him and his experienced immigration lawyer to the wrong departments/people.

He only got his citizenship when I was about to GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE and that immigration lawyer felt so outraged at the bureaucratic incompetence/red tape runaround my father and he received that he refused any further payment beyond the initial retainer he received at the very beginning.

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It seems that the ‘we know better than the rural bumpkins’ crowd is speaking loudly today. Irony is…that’s what got us the current DC situation which has gotten the non-rural bumpkin bashers in a panty binding emotional state.