Lancaster County farmer, chamber president, city councilman quoted in New York Times story | Local News

Lancaster County, long a destination for refugees and immigrants — so much so that it was once referred by the BBC as the “Refugee Capital of the World” — featured prominently in a New York Times article over the weekend headlined “What America Might Look Like with Zero Immigration.” 

The article, by Lydia DePillis and Campbell Robertson, lists actions taken and changes implemented by President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year, then outlines lessons learned from previous immigration crackdowns in U.S. history in an effort to show how national changes will effect Main Street America and the economy. 

“Visa fees have been jacked up, refugee admissions are almost zero and international student admissions have dropped,” the article states. “The rollback of temporary legal statuses granted under the Biden administration has rendered hundreds of thousands more people newly vulnerable to removal at any time. The administration says it has already expelled more than 600,000 people.” 

Lancaster farming

The article explores how concerns about deportation and visa approval can impact workforce and small-town economies, noting that after the immigration crackdown of the 1920s, employers turned to automation and other sources of labor — and that while options are even more varied now, delicate crops can’t yet be harvested by machines.

“Similarly, nobody has figured out how to harvest delicate crops with machines. During the low-immigration 1970s, some crops, like green onions, disappeared from shelves or were imported instead,” the article noted.

Luke Brubaker, who runs Brubaker Farms in East Donegal Township with his sons and grandson, said the crackdown could have a real fiscal impact. 

“It’s not going to hop from the ground into a package without somebody’s hands being involved somewhere along the way,” Brubaker told The New York Times, noting that he relies on more than a dozen foreign-born workers to milk cows and deliver calves and is not optimistic about his ability to replace them.

“You can put an ad in the paper,” he said. “Maybe you would have one American-born applying for that job if you need 10 people. And that’s a maybe.”

Will Lancaster County businesses be affected by immigration orders? Here’s what we knowImmigration, refugees and the economy

Chamber of Commerce President Heather Valudes noted the population growth in Lancaster County bucks trends in other parts of the state. Aid groups like Church World Service, which lost funding due to the Trump administration changes, have resettled tens of thousands of people over the past several decades in Lancaster County, where the population grew to 552,984 in the 2020 Census, compared with 470,658 in 2000. More than 70 languages are spoken in the county’s public schools.

“Lancaster’s numbers are growing,” Valudes said. “But that is simply because of immigrants.”

Church World Service, which works on refugee placement nationally, laid off two-thirds of its staff and joined the legal battle to force the Trump administration to allow refugees to enter the United States and reinstate the funding to make it happen.

One of those refugees is Lancaster city councilman Ahmed Ahmed, 31, who arrived in Lancaster when he was 3. “His parents, refugees from Chad, worked as certified nursing assistants, taking care of Lancaster’s elderly,” the article says. “Mr. Ahmed became the manager of a local hotel and a city councilman. … He now supervises some of the immigrants who came after him, including several Cuban refugees who worked at the hotel.”

Those refugees are in limbo, the story says. Ahmed told The New York Times he wasn’t sure what became of the Cubans he worked with and that he was concerned both about them and about what might be next for Lancaster. 

“This is only Year 1,” he said. “What is the future?”

You can read the full article by clicking here. 

Lydia DePillis, who focuses on the role of immigration in the economy, reported from Marshalltown, Iowa. Campbell Robertson, who covers Appalachia and the Mid-Atlantic, reported from Lancaster. LNP | LancasterOnline archives were also used in aggregating this story.

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