美国国家公共电台 NPR A Thriving Rural Town's Winning Formula Faces New Threats Under Trump Administration

 

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Now to Garden City, Kan., which doesn't fit the stereotype¹ of a small, Midwestern city. It is isolated² and rural. But it's also economically thriving and culturally diverse. Decades ago, Garden City embraced the meatpacking industry, and immigrants flocked there for jobs. The city worked hard to absorb them, but now its blueprint³ for success is under threat. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports.

FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE⁴: This is a place with lots of cultures and cultural hubs. One of them is in a metal building in a commercial strip near the outskirts⁵ of town.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: African Somali shop is here.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken).

MORRIS: Shelves overflow⁶ with bright African clothes and African food. In back, there's a big TV playing African soccer, some folding chairs and tables where guys like Marsal Maleye hang out after work.

MARSAL MALEYE: Seven years in Kansas and never see - someone tells me, are you from Africa? Are you from this, this, this? Never. So that's why I prefer Garden City will be my house and rest of my life.

MORRIS: Garden City has built a vibrant⁷ economy in a difficult environment by welcoming decades of immigrant labor⁸. But that model faces three distinct challenges. And one cropped up earlier this month when immigrants stopped coming. Amy Longa is with the International Rescue Committee, an agency that helps resettle refugees.

AMY LONGA: For me - Garden City office in particular - I don't have any scheduled arrival that's going to arrive in the next coming days or weeks.

MORRIS: That's a problem because meatpacking, the bedrock industry here, is hard, dirty work with high turnover⁹. Garden City's labor market is tight. Unemployment is way below the national average. And Longa, who came from Uganda a decade ago, says refugees are motivated workers.

LONGA: It's almost no plan B. It's a plan A. You become an independent person. And becoming independent is able to pay your rent.

MORRIS: Immigrants working, paying rent, paying taxes have turned Garden City and other meatpacking towns into islands of growth amid seas of rural decline. And Garden City by and large welcomes and appreciates its immigrants, as Carol Schieber found out when she was passing through from Guatemala 22 years ago.

CAROL SCHIEBER: It was so friendly and helpful that people would greet you at the stores and help you as much as they could everywhere you went.

MORRIS: Schieber liked the vibe here so much that she stayed. Garden City is now majority-Hispanic and extremely diverse, a town of 27,000 speaking at least 27 - some say 40 - languages and still finding fresh ways to welcome newcomers.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVING TABLE)

MORRIS: Dr. John Birky is moving one of those big, medical-exam tables into a modest apartment with help from a couple of Somali men.

JOHN BIRKY: So this is actually going to be a waiting room right here.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Yeah. The waiting room, yeah.

BIRKY: And then we'll come back here. And so this will be one exam room. You can see we put a sink in there.

MORRIS: Birky is setting up a nonprofit clinic handy for recent immigrants. But he's aware of a second, very serious menace to immigrants here.

BIRKY: Yeah. Do we want to publicize this beyond local community? Because we're always kind of asking ourselves, you know, what kind of bad actors are going to show up and cause issues?

MORRIS: 'Cause Garden City had a close brush with some alleged¹⁰ bad actors last fall.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Developing tonight, the FBI has foiled a terrorist bomb plot in Kansas.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: These three men are accused of planning to blow up an apartment complex in Garden City. That complex is home to a mosque¹¹.

AHMED HASSAN ALI: I've got a little bit flashback. I said, wow. What I was running from still is here. I never thought that, really.

MORRIS: Ahmed Hassan Ali, a Somali immigrant sporting a Kansas City Royals baseball cap, is standing¹² outside the low-slung apartment complex targeted by the bomb plot.

ALI: There's a lot of families. Kids did nothing wrong. Away from, like, civil wars, problems back home - they were seeking to have a better life in the United States.

MORRIS: Three members of an anti-Islamic militia¹³ calling themselves the Crusaders allegedly prepared to set off bombs at this complex and then shoot any fleeing survivors¹⁴.

ALI: But thanks to FBI, thanks to law enforcement, that didn't happen. That's how we have a good connection with the law enforcement in Garden City, especially Michael Utz, a great guy.

MICHAEL UTZ: I'm Michael Utz. I'm the chief of police here in Garden City.

MORRIS: When FBI agents told Utz about the bomb plot, he reached out himself to the Muslim community here.

UTZ: To me, it wasn't an attack on the Somalian population or the Burmese population. This was an attack on our community.

MORRIS: Finney County Sheriff Kevin Bascue agrees. And Bascue says there's a third problem vexing¹⁵ immigration here. Another Trump¹⁶ administration executive order could force local law enforcement to check the immigration status of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

KEVIN BASCUE: Well, I think that the threat to this community is the ending of what we've worked so hard over many, many years to happen here.

MORRIS: The relationship between the police and the town's valued immigrant population.

BASCUE: I think our community would be a dying community without the immigrants that have come in to fill in the gaps and to grow business.

MORRIS: Bascue says law enforcement here will continue to cooperate fully¹⁷ with federal immigration agents but with an eye toward preserving Garden City's winning formula, which starts with immigrants. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris.

1 stereotype   

n.固定的形象，陈规，老套，旧框框

参考例句：

• He's my stereotype of a schoolteacher.他是我心目中的典型教师。
• There's always been a stereotype about successful businessmen.人们对于成功商人一直都有一种固定印象。

2 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

3 blueprint   

n.蓝图，设计图，计划；vt.制成蓝图，计划

参考例句：

• All the machine parts on a blueprint must answer each other.设计图上所有的机器部件都应互相配合。
• The documents contain a blueprint for a nuclear device.文件内附有一张核装置的设计蓝图。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

6 overflow   

v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出

参考例句：

• The overflow from the bath ran on to the floor.浴缸里的水溢到了地板上。
• After a long period of rain,the river may overflow its banks.长时间的下雨天后，河水可能溢出岸来。

7 vibrant   

adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的

参考例句：

• He always uses vibrant colours in his paintings. 他在画中总是使用鲜明的色彩。
• She gave a vibrant performance in the leading role in the school play.她在学校表演中生气盎然地扮演了主角。

8 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

9 turnover   

n.人员流动率，人事变动率；营业额，成交量

参考例句：

• The store greatly reduced the prices to make a quick turnover.这家商店实行大减价以迅速周转资金。
• Our turnover actually increased last year.去年我们的营业额竟然增加了。

10 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

11 mosque   

n.清真寺

参考例句：

• The mosque is a activity site and culture center of Muslim religion.清真寺为穆斯林宗教活动场所和文化中心。
• Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.几年前，清真寺钟楼里的大钟失灵了。

12 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

13 militia   

n.民兵，民兵组织

参考例句：

• First came the PLA men,then the people's militia.人民解放军走在前面，其次是民兵。
• There's a building guarded by the local militia at the corner of the street.街道拐角处有一幢由当地民兵团守卫的大楼。

14 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

15 vexing   

adj.使人烦恼的，使人恼火的v.使烦恼( vex的现在分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论

参考例句：

• It is vexing to have to wait a long time for him. 长时间地等他真使人厌烦。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Lately a vexing problem had grown infuriatingly worse. 最近发生了一个讨厌的问题，而且严重到令人发指的地步。 来自辞典例句

16 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

17 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。