As more natural disasters strike and labor shortages develop, the loss of immigrant workers will be felt deeply
If you don't like the weather in South Dakota, wait five minutes. This is the time of year when we are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as tornadoes, derechos and wildfires, although we don’t expect to see any killer blizzards in the near future.
Like Hurricane Helene, which drenched mountain communities hundreds of miles from the ocean in western North Carolina last September, our natural disasters seem to be getting more severe, and more frequent, due to climate change. While our climate has lately tended toward drought, there was severe flooding last year in Union County (particularly McCook Lake) in the southeast corner of the state.
South Dakotans are hardy by nature, and can roll with the punches when disaster strikes. However, there are times when we do need outside assistance. The Rapid City flood of 1972 comes to mind.
If we are confronted with another major disaster, we would expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to come to our assistance. However, the Trump administration is seriously considering abolishing FEMA after this year’s hurricane season, in which case the responsibility for cleaning up, and assisting families whose homes have been devastated, would fall entirely on the states. Clearly, a state like South Dakota has fewer resources than the federal government when faced with a true emergency.
Cleaning up after a natural disaster is dangerous, difficult and dirty work. Inevitably, we rely on day laborers, many of them immigrants, to rise to the occasion. We are currently experiencing a low rate of unemployment, particularly in South Dakota, and the mass deportations which are being pursued by the Trump administration are calculated to reduce the day labor workforce.
We do have recent immigrants in South Dakota, from countries like Ethiopia, Myanmar and El Salvador, and some of them are employed in packing plants in Sioux Falls and Huron, or in industrial agriculture such as huge dairy farms, or in roofing crews who will work in the blazing heat after your roof is seriously damaged by a hailstorm.
Kristi Noem, our recent governor who now serves as Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security and frequently appears on television, has a clear message. Undocumented immigrants who came to this country seeking a better life for themselves and their children are “dirtbags” who need to be deported.
Noem and her boss ignore the evidence that undocumented immigrants actually commit fewer crimes per capita than U.S. citizens, as they strive to stay below the radar and wait for our federal bureaucracy to process their applications for green cards and lawful permanent status.
It is clear that part of the Trump administration’s strategy regarding immigrants is to make the environment so unpleasant that many of them will voluntarily self-deport. If that strategy is successful, you may wait an unusually long time for that roofing crew to arrive after the hailstorm affects your neighborhood.
It has often been pointed out that America is a nation of immigrants, and many Americans still appreciate the contributions they have made to our progress and survival through their back-breaking labor. New Orleans has a statue which recognizes the contribution that immigrant workers made to the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005
In a time of crisis, immigrants are not only tolerated but welcome. Mary Yanik, who is the director of the immigrant rights clinic at Tulane University law school, observes that “when people are serving in these roles that are really important for their politically powerful employers, ICE enforcement is sort of scarce.” After life basically returns to normal, those who are undocumented will again need to watch their backs.
During the Biden administration, there was sanctuary protection from ICE raids in churches, schools and hospitals. Naturally, that protection has been removed by the Trump administration.
California farmworkers who would normally be in the fields, harvesting fresh fruits and vegetables, are currently afraid to show up for work. In South Dakota, we can hope that this summer will not bring any huge natural disasters that require extra day laborers to help return us to normal. If disaster does strike, we can ask our old friend Kristi Noem where all the hard-working “dirtbags” have gone. She may not want to tell us.
Some of the information in this piece was gleaned from an article by Sarah Jaffe, author of “From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire,” which was written about in the June issue of In These Times.
Jay Davis of Rapid City is a retired lawyer and a regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
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