Immigration has been a heated topic of interest among Republican voters in the lead-up to this week’s Iowa caucus. Dozens of towns statewide have been re-shaped by a dramatic influx of Hispanic immigrants over the last fifteen years, many of them drawn by work opportunities in the agricultural sector.
Columbus Junction is as good an example as any of this phenomenon. The re-opening of a local meatpacking plant in 1986 brought with it a steady increase in the local Latino population. In 1990, the Census Bureau reported 14.5 percent of the local population was Hispanic. By 2000, the figure had risen to 39 percent. Mayor Dan Wilson estimates that figure has now risen to roughly half of the town’s population of some 2500 people.
Much of the national media coverage has focused on those Iowans who are angry about the changes wrought by immigration. That isn’t true of Mayor Wilson.
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