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The New York Times on August 27, 2007 profiled the six counties of the Rio Grande Valley that are home to 400,000 Latinos living in colonias, which are lots sold without sewer and water hookups. After tighter regulation and state and private aid, about two-thirds of the houses in the colonias now have water and sewer connections. In 1995, the Texas Legislature required developers of new colonias to install electricity, water lines and sewage pipes or septic tanks.

Migrant farm workers bought many of the first colonias, but today more are owned by those working at minimum-wage retail jobs, in construction or in housecleaning.

Kansas. Dodge City, Kansas, the home of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, is increasingly Hispanic. The beef packing industry began to move to rural areas of the Midwest in the 1960s, and the trend accelerated in the 1980s. The wages that attracted immigrants have been associated with falling poverty rates- the poverty rate in Dodge City was 28 percent in 1980 and 14 percent in 2000, but per capita income of $15,500 was below the US average of $21,600.

The National Beef plant in Dodge City is not unionized, but the United Food and Commercial Workers is trying to organize the largely Hispanic work force. The UFCW has called for congressional hearings into tactics used by ICE during immigration raids, citing the December 2006 raids at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants. ICE agents arrested more than 1,200 workers at the Swift plants.

About 70 percent of the 5,800 students in Dodge City schools in 2006-07 were Hispanic, and 44 percent are limited English proficient.

Iowa. The last Maytag factory in Newton, Iowa closed in October 2007, eliminating several thousand unionized jobs in central Iowa. Many of those who lost jobs at Maytag reported that it was hard to find new jobs paying $15 to $25 an hour that offered health insurance. Some 450 ex-Maytag employees are enrolled in retraining programs, supported by $15,000 per worker from the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program. Extended UI benefits, also funded by TAA, pay ex-Maytag workers $360 a week, or about $9 an hour.

The Wall Street Journal on September 18, 2007 profiled Bantu refugees resettled in Louisville, Kentucky, a city welcoming newcomers. The city of 700,000 experienced a four-fold increase in its foreign-born population between 1990 and 2004.

Bantu were considered inferior to lighter-skinned Somalis, and many fled to Kenya after civil war broke out in 1991. Some 13,500 Bantu were resettled in the US beginning in 2003, and more moved from other areas of the US as UPS, GE and other firms sought workers. The Somali Bantu speak Maay Maay and have no written language.

Louis Uchitelle, "Is There (Middle Class) Life After Maytag?" New York Times, August 26, 2007. Roxana Hegeman, "Meatpacking Remakes Rural U.S. Towns," AP, August 19, 2007.