Small Town Nebraska’s Fight with Mass Immigration
Small town Nebraska still retains a folksy charm worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting or a Hallmark movie. Homes proudly fly U.S. flags, high school football teams are the pride of the town, and large signs in farmers’ fields ask drivers to “Pray for the Troops” or similar messages. It is exactly this charming heartland authenticity, which sums up so much of what America truly is, that the open borders advocates and cheap labor profiteers despise. To them, Nebraska is not a state with its own culture and merits, home to established families and communities, but just another blob of land in “flyover country” off of which money can be made. Cheap migrant labor is one of the ways they seek to do it, regardless of the impact it has on the locals.
One recent example is the town of Fremont, a town of just 21,000 people about 45 minutes’ drive from Omaha. Fremont has changed rapidly due to mass migration from Guatemala. This town was the subject of an article reporting on a requirement that migrants sign declarations confirming they are legally in the country to obtain rental leases, a policy motivated by the volume of illegal immigration. In 2023, Fremont resident Martin Alonzo Castro was found guilty of producing and transferring fraudulent identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses and social security numbers. He was aided in this endeavor by co-defendant Estuardo Ruiz-Orozco, of Wakefield, Nebraska. Wakefield is another small Nebraska town (population just 1,500 people) that has been radically transformed thanks to large scale migration. Mass migration, and its attendant issues of crime, have now hit these small Nebraska communities, the way it has already hit small communities in other parts of the U.S.
Nebraska is increasingly divided on the issue of immigration. It is difficult not to notice the gap in values between the large cities in the extreme east of Nebraska, and the rest of its largely rural interior. While much of Nebraska is dotted with small towns and tightly knit communities, the state’s two largest cities Omaha and Lincoln behave more like the large cities elsewhere in the country. One example of this divide was a recent bill to allow illegal aliens to become Nebraska police officers. The bill was eventually amended to prevent this, but it sparked loud protests from demonstrators in scenes that would not be out of place in San Francisco or a Seattle.
Sleepy Nebraska is “out of sight, out of mind” for most Americans with no personal or family connections to the state, but Nebraska is the one of only two states (along with Maine) to divide its Electoral College votes by congressional district. As politics becomes more polarized, especially on immigration, national elections are likely to become even more closely fought. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Nebraska’s divided votes may offer victory to one candidate over the other, a possibility strategists have already discussed. Because Nebraska is becoming as divided on this issue as the rest of the nation, Nebraska’s two halves feeling so diametrically opposed could have national repercussions.
On the issue of immigration there are increasingly two Nebraskas and two Americas. One side is comprised of political ideologues and cheap labor interests, that wishes to open the borders and shrug at the disastrous consequences. The other is the sensible majority that wants careful management of the issue that puts citizens’ interests first. This is the case in Nebraska, where heartland communities like Fremont politely asking migrants if they are there legally, clashes with the bombastic “No Human is Illegal” lawn signs of Omaha and Lincoln. As Nebraska wrestles with this issue, so does the country. The open-borders lobby may only have strong support in narrow sections of the country, but their impact can be felt everywhere and even small towns in the heart of the nation are paying the price