A modest proposal: Leaving

Torn down building in Shiloh Mountain area, Arkansas
© Lisa R. Pruitt, 2011

The Washington Post's 2017 article "Disabled and Disdained" tells the story of the McGlothlins, residents of Grundy, Virginia, who have fallen on hard times. The patriarch of the family is in jail after struggling with addiction. One of his sons shared the same fate. Sheila, the matriarch, lives on $500 a month in disability payments. Tyler, her 19-year-old son, lives in the household with his wife Morgan. Neither works. Tyler panhandles to supplement his mother's income. The article wants the readers (or at least that it is my impression) to feel sympathy for Tyler. Tyler did things right. He graduated high school, stayed clean, avoided unwanted pregnancies, got financial aid, enrolled in community college, and bought a car. Then, he lost his license as the result of a car accident, and as a result was unable to keep going to school. The article also describes a man named David Hess. Hess is an almost absurd character. He crossed paths with the McGlothlins when Tyler's father was out on the streets panhandling. Hess offered McGlothlin a job, but the McGlothlin patriarch refused on account of his work injuries. Outraged, Hess proceeded to chastise him (both in person and online) for his idleness. And yet, by the end of the article, I found myself sympathizing with Hess more than I did with Tyler.

Being 19 years old

In 2018, I was 19 years old, just like Tyler. I had been in the country for a couple of years by then. I rented the living room floor of a relative's apartment for $350 a month. I say floor because I slept on the floor. I did not have to, but doing so was more comfortable than sleeping on the couch, and so that's what I did. In those days, I worked full time as a shift leader at Carl's Jr. (although, due to my coworkers' chronic absenteeism, I often worked overtime), and I was simultaneously enrolled full time at Sacramento City College. I took the bus to both, spending several hours a day on it. I met a lot of curious characters on those buses (e.g. a man, who by my best guess was from Panama, who had made it routine to tell me he was going to kill me). I thought life was pretty good. One of my classes that semester was English Composition II. The class was taught by a professor whose name I have unfortunately long forgotten. The professor was a South African woman, advanced in years, and clearly well read. She taught us how to make proper use of the English language. She taught us about how we were not supposed to say "terrorist," since "freedom fighter" was the correct term. When asked whether Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist or a freedom fighter, she said he was a terrorist. English is a complicated language. The overarching assignment for the semester was an essay on a book titled Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Shepard's job of choice in Scratch Beginnings
© Aim 2 Please Moving

Ehrenreich and Shepard

Nickel and Dimed follows journalist Barbara Ehrenreich as she goes undercover working a variety of minimum-wage jobs. In the book, Ehrenreich describes her experience in those jobs as difficult, injury-inducing, and soul-crushing. The wages she earned were not enough to cover her basic needs, and Ehrenreich, despite her best efforts, ate into the modest amount of savings she set aside for the experiment. The book's conclusion is grim: the American working poor are trapped, with very little-to-no hope of escaping despite their best efforts.

I was not convinced. My task that semester was to write a four- or five-page essay on the book. On account of a flare up of chronic contrarianism, I set out to find a book which was the antithesis to Nickel and Dimed, one which I could wield as a club against it in my essay writing process. I did not have to look for very long. Scratch Beginnings, by Adam Shepard (who, according to his LinkedIn page, is the co-founder of a brand named "Practice Empathy"), is a direct response to Ehrenreich. Shepard, a 23-year-old recent college graduate, started from scratch in Charleston, SC (a city he was unfamiliar with) with nothing but $25 in his pocket. He deliberately avoided using his degree, his connections, or any advantage not available to the general public. Ten months later, he had bought a truck, saved over $5,000, and by his account made friends and even gotten physically stronger. I echoed Shepard's criticisms of Ehrenreich in my essay and got a B. Curiously, I was not docked for the blatant contrarianism or lack of effort, but for using male pronouns a bit too much (such as when saying "if he did so..." instead of "if she did so..."). I explained to the professor that I only wrote that way because my own inner voice was male, and that was being reflected in my writing, but such an explanation was not sufficient. My core criticism of Ehrenreich, then and now, is that her experiment was unrealistic. Sixty-year-old women do not spawn into the world with nothing. In sixty years, a person accumulates skills, connections, and at least the opportunity to save. Her starting point was not a true starting point. Almost every story is a tragedy when the only thing you write is the final chapter. 

Who keeps Tyler home?

Tyler is the opposite of a 60-year-old woman. His story has really just begun; at 19, he has just entered the "agency" part of the human experience. And yet, throughout the article, I couldn't avoid the feeling like I was reading the last chapter of a story, not the first. What exactly could be the reason for that? My main suspect is the town of Grundy itself. Grundy has a population of 875 residents, distributed among 300 households and a bit under 200 families. Of these households, only about one-fifth have children at home. In the last decade, Grundy lost almost 15% of its population. With such conditions, it is not entirely unexpected that there is a lack of good jobs there. Explaining why there are no good jobs is harder. It certainly is at least partially caused by a variety of policy choices made by people far away from the McGlothlins (deindustrialization, climate policy, trade, and many more). Maybe it's just bad luck.

But a lack of good jobs cannot be the end of the inquiry. Tyler's life was more or less on rails before a few events derailed it. He lost his job at McDonald's after missing a shift due to a snowstorm, and he lost his ability to go to school after losing his license as the result of a car accident. Perhaps I am being a bit too cynical, but I doubt that a simple snowstorm and a "car accident" is all that happened. To be clear, I am not accusing Tyler of anything. However, these descriptions do not match at all with my lived experience. What kind of employer fires an employee over missing work once because of a snowstorm? I have worked a variety of jobs in food and retail, and I cannot remember even a single instance of someone being fired due to one episode of (justified) absenteeism. In all the jobs that I have had, when a person missed work due to other commitments, forgetfulness, or just being too busy doing drugs, nothing happened. At worst, they got a write-up. Businesses generally don't like to get rid of  good (or even mediocre) employees for minor absences or tardiness. Training new employees is a cost that most businesses would rather not bear too frequently. Similarly, it seems unusually harsh to take away a person's license over an accident in which they had little fault. Virginia is perhaps harsher than California in this regard, but this is still suspect. Here we come to two policies that could help a person such as Tyler, but which I am unconvinced would do the trick: (1) more stringent laws against wrongful termination, and (2) more lenient penalties for traffic infractions that result in accidents.

But even the lack of any jobs and a driver's license cannot be the end of the inquiry either. If the idea is that rural areas have a high density of acquaintanceship, was there truly not a single person in Tyler or his family's entire social network who could get him closer to a bus, or to school, or a place with jobs? Is Grundy really so far from everything? A quick search reveals that the closest metro area to Grundy is Kingsport, TN (population ~55,000), about a 2-hour-drive. This is a significant (but not insurmountable) distance, and it may explain the lack of opportunities. There are seemingly no public transportation options that would cover that trip either. Here we arrive at yet another policy that could help Tyler's situation: more extensive public transportation options. Admittedly, I have not seen a "commuter" route that stretches as far as the one Tyler would need, so its feasibility is debatable.

Rural people, immigrants, and subsidies

Venezuelan immigrants in Ecuador.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there isn't a single job available in Grundy; and, assuming also, that Grundy is simply so remote that it is literally impossible to commute by any means (whether public or private) to any other place where a job might be found, that raises the final question: why not move? How could things be worse anywhere else? I have looked for a satisfying answer to why people in economically depressed areas resist moving, and I have not found one.

As an immigrant, I find the resistance to moving genuinely difficult to understand. If life is so bad where you are and economic prospects are better elsewhere, why stay? I understand loving a place. Most immigrants from my country to the United States that I have met have expressed that they would like to go back some day. Many have expressed that, even if not possible during their lives, they would like to at least be buried back at home (it almost never happens, but it is a really nice sentiment). However, even with attachment considered, isn't leaving and returning with more resources a more productive approach? From my perspective, the McGlothlins' situation resembles something close to the natural, baseline state of things. What historically propels families out of such circumstances is a willingness to take risk, usually when things cannot get any worse. Usually, one member, often male, ventures somewhere harder and less comfortable, lives cheaply, saves aggressively, and slowly creates a foothold for others to follow. It is usually not pretty, but it's also a practice not unique to international migrants.

What I cannot relate to, in terms of my own lived experience, is the $500 in disability payments. Sheila's disability payment is also a policy choice. So is every other federal and state subsidy or program that flows into a place like Grundy. I want to be careful with my words, lest the spirit of David Hess fully take over me. I am not arguing that the government should abandon people in hard circumstances in order to force a sink-or-swim outcome. If the government did, a lot of people would undoubtedly just sink. I am asking whether support sometimes functions as an anchor. Tyler is not facing a choice between certain misery (staying) and possible misery (leaving). He is facing a choice between possible misery (leaving) and a small, predictable share of $500 (staying). There is a Spanish refrain which roughly translates to: "A bird in your hands is worth more than 100 in the sky."

Conclusion

Which brings me to a question that has loitered in my mind for the entire time I spent writing this post: at what point does subsidizing rural and remote areas just become subsidizing misery? Maybe the "death" of places like Grundy (or in less scary terms, their transformation) would benefit everyone, especially the people who live there. And maybe, what is slowing that transformation down is the accumulated weight of everyone's personal share of $500. I did not mean for this post to sound so negative. I do not think the McGlothlins are contemptible people. But perhaps there is something to the contempt that the David Hesses of the world display.

Spain's rural de-population . . . and maybe repopulation

In 2019, I went studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain. I am part Spanish, but my great-grandmother's birth records have since been lost to us. My mother often told us stories of the days when the Spanish and Native American part of the family had a small farm in Texas. They were always juxtaposed with how things went horribly wrong in my grandmother's marriage, which led to the relocation of my mother's family to Mexico. My great-grandmother, born Josephine de la Garza in 1898, had thirteen children and lived the rural life you would imagine in the run up to the Great Depression. She, her husband, and her children, including my grandmother, milked cows, kept chickens, and made ends meet by picking cotton for other people. Because of this, I always associated rurality with Hispanidad or Spanish-ness. 

I learned many things when I went to Spain. My brother who went before me, Ian, was right that we get many of our cultural cues from Spain. The type of dry, morbid, blunt, and sometimes insensitive humor I got from my family was ubiquitous in the part of Spain where I studied. Unlike in America, no Spaniards stopped being friends with me because a joke landed the wrong way. 

In some ways, Spain's politics felt less divided than in America, even in the midst of the Catalan separatist referendum on the other side of Spain. Spaniards on the left seemed more socially conservative than their American counterparts, with one self-described feminist Spanish language professor calling the term "Latinx" grammatically incorrect. Spaniards on the right were far more economically progressive than their American counterparts. I recall that my conservative friends from the local fencing club were immensely proud of Spain's socialized healthcare system. If you've seen my previous posts, this should ring a bell. Rural Americans tend to poll as more socially conservative and fiscally progressive than their metropolitan counterparts. 

Among other things I learned, I quickly became aware that Salamanca was a culturally rural place, with many of the people I interacted with either growing up rural or whose families moved to the city in the past few generations. 

Spain's population dilemma

With a population of around 47 million people, Spain also has some of the most densely populated cities of Western Europe and least densely populated countryside. The rapid industrialization of the 1950s and 1960s brought the vast majority of Spain's rural population away from the villages and into its cities. Exacerbating the issue is Spain's low birth rate, the average number of children per woman fell to 1.10 in 2024. 

The birthrares among each Autonomous Community ("Comunidades Autonomas" are Spain's rough equivalent to states) vary. Some communities like Madrid are very urbanized while others like Asturias are rural and mountainous. The Instituto Nacional de Estadistica records birth rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, and the proportion of people over certain ages by province. The site also differentiates between total births, births from exclusively Spanish mothers, and births from foreign-born mothers. The last delineation is helpful in assessing one proposed solution for Spain's depopulation, which is the encouragement of immigration to Spain from the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. 

In 2024, the provinces scoring the highest birth rates to mothers of Spanish origin are Ceuta and Melilla, two of Spain's remaining urban port enclaves in North Africa. The two cities are also undocumented immigration hotspots for Spain. Ceuta had a rate of 7.17 births per 1,000 inhabitants, and Melilla had 7.54 births per 1,000 inhabitants. Counting Spanish and foreign mothers, the rate rose moderately to 8.22 and 9.19 births per 1,000 inhabitants. Just across the Strait of Gibraltar, Andalucia and Murcia boasted higher numbers of children born to Spanish mothers than in Spain's northern regions, with 6.45 live births per 1,000 people and 6.81 live births per 1,000 people respectively. Calculations including foreign mothers yielded a very mild increase to 6.95 in Andalucia and a moderate increase to 7.93 in Murcia. 

According to the Spanish Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca, y Alimentacion (Agriculture, Fish, and Food), Andalucia, Murcia, Melilla, and Ceuta appeared to host significantly more urban communities when compared to autonomous communities in the interior of Spain. The most rural autonomous communities were Extremadura, Castilla La Mancha, Castilla y Leon, and Aragon. According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica's 2024 data, Aragon, Castilla La Mancha, Castilla y Leon, and Extremadura had birth rates of 5.27, 5.76, 4.57, and 5.82 per 1,000 inhabitants respectively. Counting foreign mothers, the rates increased to 6.33, 6.71, 5.23, and 6.20 per 1,000 inhabitants. Today's immigration may prove to be a long-term solution to Spain's rural depopulation crisis.

Credit: Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca, y Alimentacion.

While the comparatively lessened birth rates in rural Spain might seem like a cause for alarm, it is important to consider that the median age in rural Spain is much higher. In many cases, however, young people whose families left Spain's rural villages have been the ones trying to revive Spain's countryside. 

Immigration in Spain

Anecdotally speaking, I made friends with many immigrants in Spain: a Venezuelan family that owned a bar in the middle of my 35 minute walk to religious studies class at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca; an Ecuadorian churchgoer; an Argentinian fencer; a Chinese fencer; and a Black American Navy veteran who found work as an English professor. I never heard anything negative about Spain from any of them. Most Spaniards I met welcomed me, although they often mistook me for an Italian or Central American from my accent. Most never guessed me to be an American due to my obvious lack of North European features or (thankfully) fashion sense. 

Spain is an immigration hotspot in two ways: it is the bridge between Africa and Europe, and it has a long-standing policy of giving immigrants from its former colonies an expedited path to citizenship in the hopes that such immigrants remain in Spain. Most preferred immigrants come from Latin America, but the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea are also on the list. Even dual Latin American-United States citizens are eligible for the two-year fast track. Conversely, Spain generally does not have birthright citizenship for being born on Spanish soil. The contrast in treatment creates a strong preference for immigrants from the former Spanish viceroyalties in Latin America. 

The Instituto Nacional de Estadistica traces both immigration and emigration data for Spain, among other demographic data. South American immigrants, not even including Central and North Americans, outnumbered all African immigrants by a ratio of 335,185 to 128,527. Despite its preferred status, the Philippines only contributed 3,305 immigrants. With over 600,000 residents emigrating annually, most of whom are foreign-born, Spain has issues retaining immigrants. Nonetheless, with a total immigration of 1,288,562 in 2024, Spain still has a positive balance of net immigration. Furthermore, for both male and female immigrants, the single largest age cohort of immigrants is between 23 years of age and 33 years of age. In other words, Spain receives statistically prime working age immigrants.

Spain's most anti-immigration party, VOX, is split on the issue of immigration from Latin America, with younger party members opposing all immigration. Establishment party members believe that Latin Americans share a cultural and linguistic heritage with Spaniards that prime them for citizenship. Partido Popular (PP), the center-right party, outlined its 2026 immigration platform calling for tougher enforcement of immigration laws and stressing the meteoric rise of the population born overseas by 1.5 million people over four years. Reading between the lines of its five principles, "Order & Legality," "Contribution Should Be A Condition For Remaining," "Integration With Demands," and "Zero Tolerance For Crime," it is clear that Partido Popular does not share concerns about immigrants competing with Spaniards for employment opportunities. Explicitly under their 2nd proposal prong "employment as a port of entry," Partido Popular says that Hispanidad, understood as a shared space of language, history, and values, will be a positive factor in the evaluation of visas. 

 Unlike with VOX's split, PP does not appear to be advocating for a change in Spain's immigration structure, but rather stricter enforcement of existing law. With a mere half of Spain's extreme right turning against immigration from Latin America, it looks like Spain's incentives for Latin American immigration will remain in place.

For reasons likely dating back to long-standing historical grievances, VOX and Partido Popular, the center-right party, oppose North African immigration. In Moorish Blood: Islamophobia, Racism, and the Struggle for Identity in Modern Spain, Fernando Bravo Lopez acknowledges that the long Moorish occupation of Spain resulted in various reactions to that part of Spanish history. Modern Spanish reactions range from an attempt from Spaniards to erase marks of the occupation to an embrace of the past occupation as a part of Spanish history. 

The currently governing PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol) on the left appears conciliatory toward irregular migrants, most recently granting amnesty to 500,000 undocumented immigrants and allowing immigrants without legal residency access to Spain's public health services. It goes without saying that PSOE is also perfectly fine with immigration from Latin America. In any case, the proportion of Latin American migrants has eclipsed migration from North Africa, and given the political landscape, will likely continue to do so.

Foreign-Born Population of Spain by Region of Birth, 1998 and 2022

Source: Claudia Finotelli and Sebastian Rinken, Migration Policy Institute

In particular, rural communities came to rely upon Latin American immigrants who work in the agricultural and hospitality sectors of the economy. South American immigration has revived some rural villages in Teruel, Leon, and Palencia, proving that the system can work at scale. A 2023 article Is Spanish depopulation irreversible? Recent demographic and spatial changes in small municipalities by Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Isabel Pujadas-Rubies noted factors aiding or hindering the recovery of rural Spanish communities from depopulation. The researchers concluded that while immigration has historically benefitted Spain's rural communities, migration patterns depend upon the health of the economy. Migration growth was also mostly able to compensate for negative natural growth in most cases.

Credit: Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, Isabel Pujadas-Rubies. Charts derived from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE)

Infrastructure and grassroots efforts

While helpful to the recovery of Spain's villages, immigration can only go so far. Infrastructure is needed to keep rural communities livable, connected, and economically viable in the 21st century.

As illustrated by this video from early 2026, the resettlement of Spain's villages carry different challenges. One isolated Aragonese village named La Estrella in the mountains, until very recently inhabited only by an elderly couple, is less likely to be repopulated than the long-abandoned village of Sarnago in the Castilian plains. Aside from access, one key ingredient to the revival of Sarnago is the fondness that the descendants of former residents still hold for the village. 

Once a week, the relatively young descendants of Sarnago's villagers converge upon the village to repair its buildings in the hopes that the site one day can again be livable. The group even created a museum out of an old schoolhouse, potentially attracting some small measure of tourism. Illustrating further the difference between Sarnago and La Estrella is the 2023 piece by Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Isabel Pujadas-Rubies addressing whether Spanish depopulation is irreversible. The researchers ultimately concluded that while rural communities may survive through bonds with larger municipalities, rural communities that are distant from metro areas will likely never recover.  

Villages in Western Castilla y Leon experienced the greatest population loss in the twenty years preceding the 2020 pandemic, followed by small municipalities in Aragon, Castilla La Mancha, and Extremadura. Some "villages situated far from the coast in Galicia, Catalonia, and Andalusia" also suffered heavy population losses. In total, the researchers concluded that 40% of Spain's municipalities face "a bleak demographic future." Nonetheless, efforts against rural depopulation continue on the activist level, the national level, and even at the level of the EU. The President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, "created a Vice-Presidency for Democracy and Demography." The office will be responsible for assessing the link between rural demographic changes and access to services. EU efforts on rural depopulation will need to be covered in a different blog post. 

Local passion met institutional support as early as March of 2021 when the Spanish government introduced a $11.9 million plan to improve internet infrastructure in the countryside. The plan came as part of a greater effort to bring digital nomads to Spain during the pandemic years. Sarnago was among the villages attempting to attract digital nomads. By late 2024, Spain continued efforts to extend 5G internet service to rural areas with the collaboration of private companies like Vodafone and Telefonica. As of 2025, Spain's fiber optic internet connectivity coverage reaches 46% of the rural population. According to the Spanish Ministerio del Economia, Comercio, y Empresa (Economy, Commerce, and Business), rural internet coverage exceeds the coverage available to rural French, German, and British communities. 

In spite of the federal and grass-roots support for the restoration of Spain's villages, some efforts find themselves halted by local governments. In 2023, the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha threatened to fine or imprison a group of young Spaniards seeking to revitalize the village of Fraguas because the village site now lies within a natural park.

Tourism: a problem in the cities; a solution in the country

Spain is a major tourist destination for both international and internal Spanish tourists. The site of a confluence of Celtiberian, Carthaginian, Roman, Visigothic, and Moorish civilizations, in addition to the native Spanish Catholic peoples in Spain, the nation hosts fifty UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Four of the World Heritage Sites are national parks. 

Recently, however, urban Spaniards have protested against the tourism industry because of the rising cost of living in Spain's cities. In a seeming contradiction from Spain's earlier efforts to attract digital nomads to its countryside, Spain's government recently proposed a 100% tax on property purchases by non-EU citizens. While tourism may strangle the budget of locals in already saturated cities, it may at the same time provide a lifeline to rural communities. 

I specifically recall during trips from Salamanca to Valladolid, Madrid, Toledo, Avila, and Zamora that the train or bus would pass by old medieval watchtowers and beautiful scenery. There is little doubt that Spain's countryside holds untapped potential for tourism. 

The Camino de Santiago, a set of pilgrimage routes, stretches across Spain and ends at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Each of the routes necessarily pass through stretches of rural lands and communities which could use the business more than cities like Barcelona, Seville, and Madrid. 

Credit: https://www.pilgrim.es/en/routes/

The pilgrimage is traditionally completed on foot. Most of the routes run through the rural regions of Extremadura and Castilla y Leon before ending in the comparatively urbanized Galicia. The two most urbanized routes appear to be the Portuguese route and the Ruta Norte (Northern Route), which runs through the Cantabrian Mountains on Spain's northern coast. 

Portuguese Route on the Camino de Santiago 

Credit: Lisa R. Pruitt (2019)

Pilgrims stop along the route in hostels specifically for pilgrims or "albergues." Most albergues are located in urban centers, but it is conceivable that some pilgrims need to stop between cities due to lengthy distances. Furthermore, the albergues are relatively inexpensive, and in many cases, managed by the public specifically to host pilgrims rather than general tourists. For example, between Caceres and Salamanca are numerous smaller cities and villages whose economies could be bolstered by the presence of publicly funded albergues. While urban Spaniards rail against the tourism industry for raising the cost of living, rural Spaniards could preserve their communities with the aid of rest stops for weary and hungry pilgrims. 

Credit: Google Maps

Conclusion

Spain's rural depopulation crisis may seem insurmountable. Gil-Alonso, Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Pujadas-Rubies were not optimistic in their article Is Spanish depopulation irreversible? Recent demographic and spatial changes in small municipalities. However, a number of unique solutions are available to Spain. Furthermore, strong institutional support from the Spanish government and the EU may extend the services and internet connectivity needed for geographically distant villages to survive and perhaps flourish. Finally, if Spain could come back from an even worse episode of depopulation during the Reconquista, it can surely come back from this. 

The robots are coming to the Salad Bowl

Pro-immigrant demonstrators in Omaha, Nebraska. Photo Credit: NBC News

In June 2025, President Trump paused immigration raids on agricultural workplaces after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned that farmers were growing uneasy about the crackdown. As this blog noted at the time, the pause was short-lived. By October, the Labor Department’s own filing in the Federal Register admitted the crackdown risked “supply shock-induced food shortages.”

Then the federal government made matters worse by lowering wages. A new H-2A  rule (the program sets a federal minimum pay rate for employers hiring foreign agricultural workers) cut the pay rate for guest farmworkers across the country. In California, the rate for unskilled workers dropped from $19.97 to $13.45 per hour, and the United Farm Workers sued. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that farmworkers stand to lose $4.4 to $5.4 billion annually.

This is the context in which agricultural automation is arriving in rural California. The question is who does it serve and who does it displace?

The Salad Bowl goes synthetic

Salinas Valley, California (the “Salad Bowl of the World”) produces the majority of the nation’s lettuce, broccoli, and strawberries. Located in Monterey County, Salinas Valley is over 60% Hispanic or Latino, and the local economy depends on agricultural labor.

In 2025, a nonprofit called the Reservoir opened Reservoir Farms, the first on-farm robotics incubator in California, on 40 acres in Salinas. Backed by companies like John Deere and Driscoll’s (the berry company), the incubator provides startups with fabrication shops, pre-planted test fields, and access to commercial growers. It has since expanded to Sonoma County for vineyard automation.

A “vineyard robot” at work. Photo credit: Cornell Agritech

The startups coming to Salinas Valley build machines designed to do what farm workers currently do by hand. Israeli startup DailyRobotics is deploying robotic strawberry harvesters in California starting April 2026, claiming it works at two to three times the speed of human pickers.

One analysis estimated that strawberry automation alone could eliminate nearly 30,000 farmworker positions in California. The machines, which cost around $300,000 each, are priced for large-scale operations and out of reach for small family growers.

Fast advances in robotics means automated strawberry picking. Photo Credit: DailyRobotics

A manufactured crisis

The labor shortage driving this transition is real, but it is not natural. Over 40% of U.S. farmworkers are undocumented, according to the USDA and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement has removed workers from the labor pool while cutting wages for the legal guest workers who remain. In Minnesota, for example, H-2A visa numbers dropped 12% in the first half of 2025.

A prior post on this blog documented this pattern through the 2008 Postville, Iowa raid: 389 arrests in a town of 2,500, the departure of another 1,000 immigrants, the loss of 7% of the county’s workforce, and the bankruptcy of the local factory. The void was eventually filled by a new immigrant workforce from Palau.

The pattern holds internationally. Another post on this blog examined Italy’s “Agro-Mafia,” where restrictive immigration policy has not reduced agricultural dependence on migrant labor but has driven it underground into exploitative networks where workers earn as little as 3 to 4 euros an hour. Punitive enforcement produces either exploitation or automation, depending on who has capital.

Who benefits?

Reservoir Farms says the right things about workforce transition. Its CEO has stated that “automation should augment the workforce, not replace it,” and the Reservoir has partnered with Hartnell College on retraining programs. But as one community organizer in Salinas noted: “We support training, but we also know not every displaced worker will become a robot mechanic.”

Farmworkers harvest strawberries at Lewis Taylor Farms in Georgia. Photo Credit: Lance Cheung

The farmworker communities that have sustained Salinas Valley for generations face a displacement that is social and cultural. Lisa R. Pruitt and Marta R. Vanegas have written about “urbanormativity,” which is the tendency for legal and policy frameworks to render rural populations invisible. Farmworkers in Salinas are doubly invisible: rural and immigrant, performing labor the nation depends on but does not want to see.

This echoes what I wrote about in a previous post on AI data centers in rural Arizona. In both cases, Silicon Valley capital arrives in rural spaces to solve what might be seen as urban problems. Data centers serve urban tech consumers, and harvesting robots serve urban grocery consumers. The costs (labor displacement and strained local resources) fall on the rural communities that host the infrastructure.

The choice ahead

Agricultural automation is probably inevitable. Some of these technologies could genuinely improve conditions for farmworkers. But the federal government that paused immigration raids in June, reversed course days later, cut guest worker wages in October, and admitted to “supply shock-induced food shortages” in a Federal Register filing has offered farmworker communities in places like Salinas no reason to believe help is on the way.

The robots are coming to the Salad Bowl. The question is whether anyone in Washington has thought about what happens to the people already there.

Will Trump's immigration policies hurt the farmers who supported him?

Photo Credit: Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local (2025)

In the 2024 election, Trump had the most support from rural America, winning 93% of rural counties. Rural Americans have been supporting Trump since his first election in 2016 due to his pro-gun policies, tax cuts, and direct agricultural support. However, these supporters now face economic hardship, healthcare cuts, and agricultural harm with the new initiatives by the 2024 Trump administration. Additionally, the immigration enforcement by the Trump administration has led to ICE raids across farmlands, which has been detrimental to farmers. With mass deportation of immigrant laborers, the agricultural business has been suffering because many immigrants come to the U.S. and are hired as farmers.

Read more blog posts about Trump’s support from rural Americans and effects of that support during 2016 here, here, and here.

Figure Credit: Pew Research Center (2025)

While immigrants do not make up an exceedingly large portion of the rural population, they do play an important role in the rural workforce, especially in the healthcare, agriculture, construction, and service industries. Additionally, rural areas need migration to prevent their populations from dying out, and many rural areas rely on immigrants – not only to keep the local economy afloat, but also to have stability in their populations. In this post, I will be focusing only on agricultural workers, but I want to flag that immigrants come to America for all types of opportunities, Immigrants are not only farmers or farmworkers.

Figure Credit: KFF; Authors: Drishti Pillai and Samantha Artiga (2025)

Pew Data research also shows that in general undocumented immigrants make up 5% of the US workforce and 53% of hired labor on farms. Agriculture seems to be the industry most reliant on undocumented workers. Farm owners have suggested that the only people showing up for employment on these farms tend to be immigrants. Farm owners do not care whether the workers are properly documented or not because they need people who are willing to work. To be frank, undocumented workers are being exploited because of the fear of being “caught.” Undocumented workers will take a lower wage, no healthcare and social security in order to have any work available to them. They take jobs that don't pay them enough to have a sustainable family lifestyle, just for the sake of having a job. And farm owners would hire them because of that very reason, paired with the fact the immigrant workers are willing to do the manual labor. And the reality is American citizens do not want to be farmers nor farm laborers anymore.

Interestingly, many farmers voted for Trump, knowing that the immigration policies could potentially affect their employees. Many farm owners rely heavily on immigrants. Now, undocumented farm workers are afraid to show up to work, in fear of being caught by ICE and getting deported. There has also been an increase in self-deportations as well due to the fearmongering by the Trump administration, and undocumented immigrants not wanting to take the risk of being detained by ICE and potentially getting criminally charged (which would hurt any potential for becoming naturalized down the line). The agricultural economy depends on immigrants to help harvest the crops and send produce out to stores. The immigration policies and raids, while heavily affecting agriculture, is (in reality) affecting all Americans’ lives. The inhumane treatment of immigrants by ICE needs to be discussed, maybe then people will be more empathetic to what is happening by this administration. People are risking their lives to come work in the states, people who take the lower pay wages, and we need to protect those people.

If rural American farmers were more aware of how these policies could have affected them, perhaps would they not have voted for Trump in 2024? That seems to be mostly untrue. While a few rural farmers may be regretting their vote, most are staying loyal to Trump saying that they think “tariffs eventually will make [them] great again.” Only some farmers have recognized that Trump’s immigration policies are hurting the American agricultural business. What will happen if Trump continues to ignore that rural America is dependent on migrant settlement and labor?

I'll close with a quote from a Wisconsin dairy farmer:

“We built an economy that relies on people, but we have a public policy that demonizes them” - Hans Breitenmoser discussing immigrant agricultural workers and Trump’s policies

Rural immigration: then and now

  The image conjured up from the mention of rurality likely resembles Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic." The piece shows a man and a woman, two thin, tall looking, presumably Anglo-Americans standing in front of a farmhouse and a piece of another red structure. The man holds a pitchfork, and both the man and woman bear stern expressions imparted to them by the Great Depression. In the imagination of most people, the rural Americans Wood depicted are white farmers, without much thought as to the particular ethnic origin or religious denomination of such white farmers.  

Credit: Oleg Galeev

We often forget that the ancestors of people like those depicted in "American Gothic" were once immigrants too. Similar to the decrepit farmhouse in the picture, the material conditions shaping early immigration to the American countryside have faded, leaving behind echoes of the past. Large-scale commercial agriculture has since replaced small-scale, family-run agriculture. Rural residency is increasingly no longer defined by yeoman land ownership. 

I. How the timing of migrations result in the present-day makeup of most rural communities. 

The Homestead Act of 1862 radically changed the demographic landscape of American territory from the still-sparse Midwest to the Pacific Ocean, especially those sparsely settled territories in the Great Plains region. The act was accommodating toward immigrants at the time. 

The "37th Congress intended the Homestead Act as a way to bolster a stagnant population and build an agricultural nation through immigration and the settlement of the public lands of the United States."  Of course, the Homestead Act's preceding efforts found opposition, as "Northern  owners feared a mass departure of their cheap labor force and Southern states worried that rapid settlement of western territories would give rise to new states populated by small farmers opposed to slavery." The temporary exit of the southern states from the United States made the long-awaited Homestead Act a reality.

Newly arrived German immigrants took a significant portion of the land grants available, along with already settled Anglo-Americans and newly arrived Irish immigrants. As can still be observed from the 2020 census, German immigrants fleeing from turmoil within the not-yet united Germany now make up the lion's share of communities west of the original thirteen states. It's worth noting that even up to World War One, German-Americans themselves were still considered a type of ethnic minority. The frontiers, then as now, were a way for the marginalized to find more opportunities forbidden to them on settled shores. 

The echoes of migration patterns from Europe to the United States can be directly observed with the help of the US Census Bureau's My Congressional District interactive site. For example, a search of Idaho District 2 shows a variety of metrics for the population of the district, including ancestry. English (186,185) and German (138,240) outstrip all other ethnicities, with Irish (81,549) coming in a distant third. 

Next-door in Oregon's rural District 2, we see similar numbers with German, English, and Irish Americans far outstripping every other ethnicity. In Kansas's rural District 1, the contrast is more stark with German-Americans (195,377) outnumbering English-Americans (67,604) and Irish-Americans (79,082) combined. In Iowa, the scene of "American Gothic," German-Americans outnumber Irish-Americans, the second most populous ethnicity of the state, by a ratio of two to one in all four Congressional districts. The sheer demographic weight of German immigration was felt as far as in formerly Spanish California, where the city of Anaheim, the tenth largest city in California and home of Disneyland, was founded in 1857 as a colony of German farmers and vinters, although the vineyards were soon replaced by citrus groves. 

German-Americans, whose ancestors immigrated alongside Irish-Americans right on time for the frontiers to open for settlement, number among the top three ethnicities for most rural districts, alongside Irish-Americans and English-Americans. Italians, East European Christians, Jews, and Greeks arriving around the 1890s missed their opportunity to take advantage of the Homestead Act, so they mostly settled in the larger cities. 

The German-American predominance in rural communities appears to halt once hitting Appalachia. In Kentucky's 1st District, English-Americans (95,889) outnumber German-Americans (69,030). Further east in Kentucky's 2nd District, the ratio rises to above two English-Americans (107,759) for every German-American (48,809). Farther east in West Virginia's 1st District, within the bounds of America's original 13 states, we see German-Americans (84,681) again outnumbered by both English-Americans (142,824) and Irish-Americans (91,090). West Virginia's 2nd District, which is adjacent to Southwest Pennsylvania, has a plurality of German-Americans (154,652) outnumbering English-Americans (118,480) and Irish-Americans (123,287). Contrary to popular perception, the Scotch-Irish number only 15,067 and 12,822 in Districts 1 and 2 of West Virginia, respectively. In the far Southwest corner of Pennsylvania, Congressional District 14's German-Americans (179,027) massively outnumber English-Americans (73,661) and Irish-Americans (109,698). Even east of the Appalachian Mountains in PA's District 9, German-Americans hold an even more convincing plurality (209,396) over English-Americans (65,231) and Irish-Americans (92,200). However, just one district over in the significantly more urban District 8, German-Americans (113,212) are outnumbered by both Irish-Americans (136,548) and Italian-Americans (114,220).]

Looking at rural and inland Vermont’s only congressional district on the other side of the United States as a control, we see different numbers. Irish (119,423) and English (117,946) predominate Vermont with German (72,670) coming in third if French (53,628) and French-Canadian (39,718). The next most populous group in Vermont are Italians (51,200). New Hampshire tells a similar story, with Irish and Italian populations outpacing German populations. German-Americans find themselves without a plurality in most of Virginia's districts, North Carolina, and South Carolina, but still close to Irish and English population levels.

Based on the sample states mentioned, rural America is mostly dominated by English, German, and Irish Americans. German predominance in American communities would make Benjamin Franklin spin in his grave, although he would be relieved of his concerns that the Germans would not learn the English language. Although German-Americans and Irish-Americans are now considered white, I would argue that each group of immigrants carries with them historical distinctions within the context of American history. To clarify, English-Americans are the same stock as the Founding Fathers. While many Englishmen did immigrate to the United States in the 1800s, they did not need to assimilate to the same degree that German and Irish immigrants were expected to assimilate, so they don't necessarily share the same experience most immigrants had.  

II. The evolving situation

The conditions which led to the initial population of the American countryside have largely been undone. Roughly 40 percent of nonmetro counties reached peak-population in the 1950s before experiencing ongoing population decline. Small-scale agriculture continues to decline in profitability. Manufacturing, arguably more important to the rural economy than the urban economy, saw employment fall by nearly 30 percent between 2001 and 2015. Rural communities find themselves disinvested of schools for their dwindling youth demographic. Where rural communities are losing native-born population, minorities and immigrants have risen to the occasion, filling the gaps. In Juleberg, population of 1,181 in the Northwest corner of Colorado, one immigrant math teacher stepped in when no American math teacher would take the vacancy. In other communities, schools have looked overseas to fill teaching vacancies. Where Americans are unwilling to move to work positions in rural locations, it turns out that immigrants will. In Depopulation, Deaths, Diversity, and Deprivation: The 4Ds of Rural Population Change, Daniel Lichter and Kenneth Johnson shed light on surprising population trends surrounding the simultaneous depopulation of rural communities and the immigration toward rural communities. According to the 2020 Census, 76 percent of the non-metropolitan population is white, "nearly two-thirds of all rural population growth was due to Hispanic population growth," That growth, however, did not fully compensate for the total loss in population of nonmetro counties. 

Interpreting the data another way, immigration to rural communities may be cause for hope. If most of the population loss is from old age deaths, and presumably most immigrants to rural areas are young, working-age adults, it stands to reason that there's a possibility that recent arrivals may form families in these areas.

 Particularly with oil and natural gas harvesting, economic diversification comes opportunities for labor and ethnic diversity. While the workers in the PBS video are not immigrants to America, they are urban immigrants to rural spaces. As noted in the PBS video on natural gas fracking attracting a diverse array of workers, people are less likely to move when they have children. Like foreign immigrants, these workers too can become the basis of new local communities for later generations. An inference from this brief aside is that even as the need for labor in agriculture declines, there still exist new and alternative labor pulls to rural parts of the country. In a way, it's the same story as the rest of America's history on the frontier with spatial gaps waiting to be filled. 

                                                        Credit: Daniel Lichter, Kenneth Johnson

Though they receive far fewer grants and benefits than their German and Irish predecessors enjoyed, Hispano-American and Filipino immigrants are helping to revitalize America's old and new frontier in rural communities. 

III. Conclusion

The more things change, the more they don't. In the same way that the United States government relied in part upon German and Irish immigrants to settle the not-yet cultivated lands of the Midwest and beyond, the current government may learn lessons from the past. While a modern-day Homestead Act, in its exact prior iteration using federally held lands, is unlikely to succeed due to the ongoing difficulties presented to non-commercial small-scale agriculture, the expansion of internet and commercial infrastructure, not limited to cell towers and roads, to rural communities may see a different type of artisanal, non-land dependent, economic growth.

New angles on rural library closure, with a story out of central Washington

Library in Kingtson, Arkansas 2013

Major media outlets have published several rural library stories --most of them about the closure of rural libraries--in the past few years.  (Read some of them here). This latest, from the New York Times, is a bit more complex than most.  Anna Griffin reports form Tieton, Washington, population 1389, in Yakima County.  The headline is "Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids, and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries."  Here's the lede: 

Cole Leinbach, a librarian in Tieton, Wash., population 1,610, watched intently as a 7-year-old girl hunkered down with a book in a corner of the town’s one-room library. Her brother, 4, had opened a board game searching for potential toys. Their mother talked quietly on her phone in Spanish.

“This is what libraries are supposed to be,” he said, “just a place a mom can go with her kids for an hour to hang out and get some kind of enriching entertainment.”

But the Tieton library, which occupies a few hundred square feet in a side room at the city hall, is closing next month, a casualty of rising costs in Yakima County, Wash., shrinking help from Washington, D.C., financing decisions made decades ago and significant demographic change.

“I’ve had people come express dismay,” said Mr. Leinbach, who at 26 has been a librarian for about a year and a half. “A library is in a lot of ways a kind of civic symbol, a demonstration of a community’s commitment to itself. So what does it mean if that goes away?”

* * * 

That is a question a growing number of communities, many of them in Republican states, will be facing soon. In March, President Trump issued an executive order dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which has provided around $270 million a year to public and academic libraries to help pay for services such as summer reading programs, broadband internet access, lending between libraries, staff training and access to national databases.

Don't miss the rest of the Tieton, Washington story here.  

New immigration fee will hurt rural schools relying on international teachers

Sequoia Carrillo reported from Hardin, Montana for NPR on a school system's heavy reliance on teachers from the Philippines and what that reliance means given the new Trump administration rule requiring a $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa application.  Here's an excerpt from Carrillo's story:  

Hardin, like many rural districts, relies on international teachers to fill out its staff. Out of 150 teachers in the district, about 30 are in the U.S. on teaching visas. Many are on short-term J1 visas, with hopes to one day graduate to the longer-term H-1B visa.

Now, things are about to get even tougher — for the district and for teachers like Tomimbang [who has taught middle school math in Montana for four years after doing so for 18 years in the Philippines]..

Last month, President Trump unveiled a plan that requires employers pay a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas. In his announcement, Trump specifically called out high-paying tech jobs that he said were filled by too many foreign workers.

However, the impact on schools and educators will be significant. According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, more than 20,000 educators are in the country on H-1B visas — the third most common occupation group for the program.

"I don't have a teacher in my district that makes $100,000 a year," [Hardin school superintendent Tobin] Novasio says. For school districts, "to pay that fee on top of a salary is just gonna kill the H-1B for education."

The change is a blow to some districts' long-term strategy to keep teachers in classrooms.

More relevant context fron superintendent Novasio:  

"We don't have candidates." ... Earlier in his career, [Novasio] says that if he posted an elementary teacher position, at least 20 people would apply. Now, "if we get two, we're ecstatic."

Here is a prior post touching on a different angle about rural schools' reliance on Filipina/o teachers.  

Trump administration flip flops again on immigration enforcement in the agriculture sector

I wrote late last week about Trump's moratorium on immigration enforcement in the agriculture and hospitality sectors, and he has already reversed that position.  The Washington Post reports:  

Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

Here are some quotes from a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday re: what's a stake with raids on food producers and related sectors.   The headline is "Trump Struggles to Press Deportations Without Damaging the Economy," and some excerpts related to the agricultural sector follow.  The first is what Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday:  

Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans.  It took us decades to get into this mess and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out.

The journalists use the illustration of a Sackets Harbor, New York farmer whose diversified farm operation (which includes agri-tourism) was raided in March: 

Ron Robbins, who runs a family farm in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., has been short-handed since March, when he says around 45 immigration agents showed up.

ICE agents searched the 8,000-acre operation that milks 1,500 cows and grows corn, soybeans and some produce, then arrested eight people they said were in the country illegally. One of the detainees was a Guatemalan man who worked as the top assistant to the farm’s tourist business, Robbins said.

Since the raid on his property, Robbins, a 4th-generation farmer, said family members are working 18-hour days to keep the operation going, except for the strawberry patch. “We don’t have enough people to do this work,” he said. “It’s a no-win situation.”

Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that an Omaha meatpacker that was raided a few weeks ago is functioning at just 20% of capacity following the raid.  

Here's some helpful data from the WSJ on the extent to which our workforce is staffed by undocumented immigrants: 

Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally account for about 4.4% of the U.S. workforce, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis of 2023 census data. But their share of the workforce in some industries is much higher, the analysis found: 19% in landscaping services, 17% in crop production, 16% in animal slaughtering and processing and 13% in construction.

Roughly 12 million people immigrated to the U.S. from 2021 to 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office, many of them either illegally or through an emergency process set up by the Biden administration. Many now have some kind of temporary permission to stay in the country and work, though they could ultimately face removal. Others sneaked into the country or overstayed visas.

The newcomers provided the economy with an infusion of working-age people eager for jobs. Immigration boosted economic growth in recent years and helped cool a job market that was in danger of overheating by “rebalancing the tightest parts of the labor market, where wage and price pressures were most extreme,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note last year.

Trump has recently been given the nickname TACO--"Trump always chickens out"--in relation to trade negotiations.  I can't help think the same applies to his recent quick change of mind on immigration enforcement priorities.  

Postscript.  Politico Magazine published this on the topic yesterday, but I just became aware of it.  A few key excerpts follow:  

For now, Trump appears to be siding with the farmers. He responded last week with a vague Truth Social post acknowledging that his immigration policy was hurting farmers and vowed that “change was coming.” He followed with another post late Sunday, directing immigration officials to “FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

* * *

For months, farmers and ranchers across the United States operated with a cautious understanding that Trump’s deportation spree would not touch their workforce, with some lawmakers saying the White House had promised to spare the industry from aggressive enforcement — until last week.

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said the raids on agriculture producers were “just wrong” and suggested the president agrees — but it “must be somebody a little lower in the food chain that’s making those mistakes.”  

“They need to knock it off,” Thompson told reporters Thursday. “Let’s go after the criminals and give us time to put processes in place so we don’t disrupt the food supply chain.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said he was told “straight to my face” that the Trump administration was “not going after agriculture.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump has “always stood up for our farmers” and will continue to “strengthen the agricultural industry and boost exports” while also enforcing the country’s immigration laws and removing undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s statements on protecting the farm workforce came as a relief to the ag sector. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau, said in a statement he looks “forward to working with the President on solutions that ensure continuity in the food supply in the short term.” On Saturday, Michael Marsh, president of the National Council of Agriculture Employers, sent a letter expressing his willingness to collaborate with the Trump administration on a solution that “enhances national security and simultaneously recognizes that America’s ability to feed itself is integral to our national security.”

Postscript 2:   NPR's Politics podcast on June 17 is about this issue.   And WSJ has just published a brief story about Chobani Yogurt CEO's statement that the U.S. food system cannot function under current immigration enforcement strategies.