{"id":5058,"date":"2011-11-14T07:55:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T12:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5058"},"modified":"2011-11-14T15:44:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T20:44:44","slug":"morning-read-2-does-the-north-country-need-a-new-immigrant-wave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/11\/14\/morning-read-2-does-the-north-country-need-a-new-immigrant-wave\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read 2:  Does the North Country need a new immigrant wave?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/11\/14\/us\/as-small-towns-wither-on-plains-hispanics-come-to-the-rescue.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">New York Times<\/a> has a fascinating story up this morning about withering Great Plains towns which, after years of population loss and decline, are seeing a resurgence thanks to Hispanic immigration.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains,  including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one  of exodus \u2014 of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after  year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as  fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another  demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.<\/p>\n<p>Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed  the decline in the white population in many places. In the process,  these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican  groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is  Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that  seemed to be staggering toward the grave.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Is this what we need here in the North Country?\u00a0 We have plenty of towns that are aging, dwindling, looking for fresh blood.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe we should be encouraging our migrant workforce &#8212; on dairy farms, apple orchards, the tourism industry, etc. &#8212; to begin putting down roots here?\u00a0 As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times has a fascinating story up this morning about withering Great Plains [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,4852],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5059,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions\/5059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}