Immigrants Reshape Cowtowns as South, East Flavor Old West

GARDEN CITY, Kan. —  The Asian market in this Kansas cow town is crammed with coolers of fresh fish. Metal shelves are packed with cans of pickled bamboo shoots and exotic sauces with Asian names.

Ten-pound bags of rice are stacked nearly 6 feet high, like a bunker against the window.

Down the street, a family looking for work eats tortillas filled with spiced pork at the restaurant in El Remedio market. The market also offers pinatas, Mexican-brand groceries, tortilla presses, mole, 150 different types of healing herbs--and cowboy boots.

The boots are perhaps the only clue that the two ethnic stores aren’t in a big cosmopolitan city like, say, Los Angeles.

This is Garden City, population 30,000, one of several southwestern Kansas cow towns learning to incorporate new cultures into its Old West heritage.

Garden City, which has more ethnic restaurants than steakhouses, was the first to deal with large numbers of immigrants who have followed jobs to the area’s growing meatpacking industry over the last two decades. Minorities make up about half of the city’s residents.

Two other Old West communities in Kansas--Dodge City and Liberal--also have experienced large-scale immigration over the last few years as the meatpacking industry has spread.

A study by the Center for Immigration Studies, released last year, found that immigration was just as intense in five counties in southwestern Kansas as it was in California, Florida and along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The large, rapid influx of people, many of whom stay only a short time, creates challenges for the small communities. All three Kansas communities have struggled with housing shortages, school overcrowding, high student turnover, crime and sudden population increases.

The area is true to its ranching and cowboy heritage. Dodge City has Boot Hill, a re-creation of the frontier town seen in old Western movies. Visitors can take rides in stagecoaches.

Garden City is remembered as the small agricultural community shaken by the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family, the crime that became the subject of Truman Capote’s book “In Cold Blood.” But tiny Holcomb, just outside Garden City, is now home to the state’s largest meatpacking plant.

Liberal sits on one of the largest natural gas fields in the world. It has a Wizard of Oz tourist attraction that features Dorothy’s house and the yellow brick road.

But it’s not hard to find foreign influences. Signs in several languages are posted at public places, including the grocery store and post office. One of the most popular restaurants in Garden City serves Vietnamese food. The Garden City Telegram newspaper publishes weekly editions in Spanish.

The common thread between the old and new cultures is the economy’s foundation.

Feedlots--a maze of fenced lots crammed with cattle--are more frequent than towns along the two-lane highways that run through southwestern Kansas. The cattle are the raw materials for the enormous meatpacking plants in Garden City, Holcomb, Dodge City and Liberal, which run largely on immigrant labor.

The story of immigration here isn’t a new one. Many southwestern Kansas residents can trace their lineage to European immigrants who came to the state to farm or to Mexicans who came to Garden City to work in sugar-beet fields at the turn of the century.

“To me, there is some comparison between the Old West and the New West,” said Mary Regan Wildeman, executive director of the Finney County Historical Society. “They left strife or they left political problems in other countries looking for a new place.”

Than Nguyen, the owner of Kieu Fashion, came to Garden City 22 years ago from Vietnam.

“We had to leave,” he said. “We need freedom.”

His store is packed with dresses designed for Hispanic celebrations, tiny tuxedos for toddlers, matching outfits for work.

Rosa Hernandez was shopping one morning with relatives for a bridesmaid dress. When they brought one dress to Nguyen, he nodded, smiling, and said, “Bonita”--Spanish for “pretty.” Nguyen and his wife have learned several Spanish phrases because that is the language many of their customers speak.

Garden City has several grocery stores that cater specifically to immigrant populations, offering Mexican shampoo or spices from Vietnam. Even Dillons, the Kansas-based grocery chain, has dedicated entire aisles to products popular among the Hispanic population, including cilantro, corn husks, pig ears and tortillas, as well as beauty products and medicines from Mexico.

Most residents trace the flood of immigration in southwestern Kansas to the 1980 opening of the IBP plant in Holcomb, although there were other meatpacking plants in the area before that. The IBP plant is the largest in the state, with 2,750 employees and a $64-million annual payroll.

Five meatpacking plants in southwestern Kansas employ a total of 9,600 people. Two of the plants are in the Garden City area, two are in Dodge City, and one is in Liberal.

Immigrants are drawn to the work because it is physical labor that doesn’t require English. Wages range from $8.74 to $12.14 an hour at the Excel plant in Dodge City and $7 to $10.65 an hour, plus benefits, at IBP.

But the work is hard, and turnover is high.

“There’s always another truckload of folks coming that want to work,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

After the meatpacking plants opened, clusters of trailer parks with narrow streets and hundreds of boxy metal dwellings collected between the edge of town and the open space of the prairie--cheap housing for new arrivals with little money.

Some of the trailers house entire families, while others are home to groups of men who send money to faraway families.

One trailer park has its own Head Start and English-as-a-second-language program.

This is where Lan Vu teaches English. She and her husband escaped Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Her husband teaches math and French in the public schools.

Vu’s class includes Anh Nguyen, 25, who came to Garden City from Vietnam in March with her parents, brother and sister. She nodded when asked whether she likes Garden City. When asked why, she said, “Money too much.”

Her family lives in the trailer court. Her mom stays home and cooks for the family. Everyone else works at the IBP meatpacking plant.

“I work at IBP very hard,” she said. “Trim fat. Trim fat with knife. Pay good, but hard job.”

She showed her swollen hand. One finger refused to unfold unless it was pried open by another finger. She said she wants to learn English, take classes and find a job working at a computer.

The recent large-scale immigration has brought new cultures and experiences to Garden City, making the community more cosmopolitan and a great place to raise kids, said Donna Skinner, basic skills director at Garden City Community College. She moved to town in 1977, when the population was around 16,000. Now, it’s closing in on 30,000.

But the changes haven’t been easy for everyone.

Dawn Stubbs, 38, who grew up in Garden City, says the town doesn’t seem as safe since it has grown.

The diversity is good, said Stubbs, an administrative assistant at Farr Better Feeds. But when she looked for another administrative job similar to the one she had, she said she was frustrated to find that most required that she speak Spanish or another language.

“That kind of bothers me, that I have to learn it to get a job here,” she said. “I think it should be the other way around. It kind of makes you feel like the minority.”

Immigration has created challenges for law enforcement and other emergency officials because people speak different languages. Schools have had to put up temporary classrooms, and there has been a shortage of housing.

One adjustment in Dodge City has been educating immigrants on local ordinances and state laws.

A few years ago, the city banned the slaughter of animals within the city limits--except at the meatpacking plants--because of health concerns. That action was taken because some residents were slaughtering their own animals and leaving entrails and other waste in the garbage, said Larry Kenton, the city’s human relations director.

Although Dodge City has incorporated ethnic groceries, restaurants and practices into its culture, the town in which Wyatt Earp once served as marshal has not forgotten its past.

“The thing with Dodge City that will always be symbolic,” Kenton said, “is the Western heritage and the association that everyone makes with the American cowboy and our agricultural and livestock roots.”