Federal policy as a structural barrier to integration in Greater Minnesota

Throughout rural Minnesota, H-4 visa holders cook tacos, tamales, and pastries in home kitchens, offering them for “suggested donations” from their doorsteps. Federal law prohibits these spouses of temporary workers from earning income, pursuing vocational education, or working remotely for foreign companies. So communities develop workarounds — informal economies that satisfy neither policy intentions nor community needs.

“It is strange to not work,” said one woman in Jackson who arrived from Mexico eight weeks earlier with her six-month-old baby. “We have always worked, even as children.”

On a Monday night at the Jackson Center for the Arts, sixteen immigrant workers gathered for English as a Second Language class — nine Spanish speakers, one Arabic speaker, and their spouses. New Fashion Pork, a processing company headquartered in Jackson, pays employees to attend four hours weekly. Teacher Cay Gjertson tracks arrival times carefully: “I want you to be paid for each and every minute you’re here.”

The company invests in language education because workforce integration serves business interests. Workers who understand English communicate better with supervisors, navigate safety protocols, follow quality standards. Their families who speak English participate in parent-teacher conferences, health care appointments, city council meetings. Economic interdependence makes integration a practical necessity rather than ideological choice.

But Liliana Becerra, who co-teaches the class, receives no payment. Her H-4 visa prohibits employment. She volunteers while New Fashion Pork pays students to learn from her.

The contradiction illustrates tensions between federal immigration policy and community integration efforts.

When economic reality meets legal restriction

“This is a very cohesive group,” Gjertson said, watching students play “How Well Do You Know Me?” — a game where they guess each other’s favorite foods, hobbies, dreams. The classroom bulletin board announces children’s art classes and a sober living house beneath a sign reading, “This is a safe space to be who you are.”

Students work through Readworks literacy software, listening to a recorded biography of Louis Armstrong at speeds they control. Keywords: “innovative,” “perform.” On the reverse page, a passage about dancer Celia Cruz in Spanish. Gjertson, who taught in Colombia, reads aloud while students correct her pronunciation, becoming her teachers as she becomes theirs.

One student shares why he came: “In Jackson, it’s more free and safe. In a city we must lock our doors, our cars always. Here it’s different.” He learned about the job from his brother’s wife and came for economic opportunity. “If you lose a job in Mexico, there is not always another job to pick up.”

Another student agrees: “There is more opportunity to earn money in the U.S., and the quality of life is far better than where I came from.”

The women whose visas prevent employment nod. Very difficult leaving their families, they say, but “the community here has allowed us to make family of friends.”

This phrase — making family of friends — describes relationships formed despite enforcement pressures. Relationships across cultural lines. Economic interdependence. Communities where children carry passports to school but play soccer together on weekends, where employers invest in workers’ language education, where neighbors become family.

The credential waste

The economic calculation becomes starker when credentials enter the equation. Most students in the Jackson ESL class hold college degrees from Mexico — education that U.S. credential recognition systems don’t acknowledge. They work processing lines at New Fashion Pork not because they lack qualifications, but because federal and state systems prevent their degrees from translating across borders.

So compelling is the economic opportunity that college-educated professionals accept work processing pork — jobs vital to southwest Minnesota’s agricultural economy but far below their training. The community gains their labor. The workers gain income their home countries couldn’t provide. But everyone loses the expertise those college degrees represent — skills that could serve rural Minnesota’s documented shortages in health care, education, business management, and professional services.

This credential waste multiplies across the region. The H-4 visa spouses cooking tamales for donations may hold degrees in accounting, nursing, engineering, education in their home countries that U.S. policy doesn’t recognize. Rural Minnesota faces critical professional shortages while qualified workers process meat because credential recognition systems and visa restrictions prevent them from contributing their actual expertise.

Volunteer workarounds and informal economies for integration

When Gjertson asked at the class’s beginning, “You’re not with any government agency, nor reporting anyone to any government body, correct?” — the question revealed the enforcement climate shaping even this employer-sponsored, legally structured integration program.

Students come on H-2B temporary worker visas. Their spouses hold H-4 dependent visas. Becerra volunteer teaches on an H-4 visa. Federal policy prohibits all of them from earning income for work that clearly serves community interests — teaching language skills that enable democratic participation.

The result: creative arrangements that skirt legal boundaries. Throughout the region, qualified professionals operate in gray economies because federal law prevents them from contributing their skills legally.

In the coming weeks, Becerra and her sister, Laura, will return to Mexico to visit the family members they left behind for economic opportunity. Gjertson will teach solo, having students work independently on software tutorials because the volunteer teaching model lacks sustainability when teachers have competing obligations.

What could this program accomplish if Becerra could be hired as a paid instructor? More class sections serving more workers. Curriculum development. Community outreach. Professional development. Instead, it depends on volunteer labor from someone whose qualifications federal policy doesn’t recognize.

Constitutional observers: when communities organize defensively

Forty miles north in St. James, Uniting Cultures took a different approach to federal enforcement pressure. When the organization planned its annual Multicultural Fiesta — an event drawing more than 2,000 attendees — they positioned constitutional observers throughout the venue.

“We felt like as the public face, we could help people who have different immigration statuses,” said Carissa Lick, Uniting Cultures executive director. Fifteen community members completed observer training through COPAL (Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina), a grassroots organization founded in 2018 to empower Latine families across Minnesota. COPAL provides constitutional observer training through the Immigrant Defense Network of Minnesota, part of its broader work organizing immigrant workers and advocating for immigrant rights. The organization, which now has more than 500 members statewide, opened a Mankato office in 2021 to serve Greater Minnesota. The training, hosted at Watonwan County Public Library, prepared observers to document interactions and protect due process rights if Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared.

The constitutional observers never needed to intervene. But their presence demonstrated how rural communities develop protective infrastructure when federal actions threaten democratic participation spaces. Uniting Cultures now leads Watonwan County Cares, an immigrant defense network established in 2024, coordinating protective measures across the county rather than just at single events. Cultural celebrations, soccer leagues, ESL classes — all become potential enforcement sites, forcing communities to choose between hosting integration events and protecting participants from the consequences of attending.

Uniting Cultures, composed of both white Americans and Hispanic residents, explicitly positions St. James as a “welcoming community” — an intentional stance rather than passive acceptance of demographic change. This proactive approach, Lick says, has shifted “the default opinion in St. James to be much more positive toward Hispanic people, toward the diversity of being together.”

But even welcoming communities require defensive mechanisms. Convivencia Hispana, a Latino-led organization providing scholarships and supporting elderly Spanish speakers, operates under Uniting Cultures’ organizational umbrella. The “cover,” as Lick acknowledges, protects members whose immigration status creates vulnerability.

Federal enforcement pressure has led communities to develop organizational structures that protect vulnerable members rather than focusing solely on integration programming.

Fields of belonging – policy reality playing out 

The same pattern repeats on soccer fields. Children form teams by skill regardless of documentation status, creating what political scientists call “cross-cutting affiliations” — relationships that prevent political differences from becoming total social divisions. But constitutional observers watch from the sidelines, and parents separate by language — no institution creates structured opportunities for parent relationships the way New Fashion Pork creates opportunities for language learning.

Economic reality forces cooperation. Worthington’s JBS plant employs more than 2,200 workers. Their children attend schools, their families shop at local businesses, their labor sustains the community’s economic foundation. Roads need plowing regardless of the driver’s documentation status. Fire departments need volunteers regardless of country of origin. Schools need enrollment that higher populations bring.

This practical governance reveals how communities function when people focus on shared problems rather than manufactured divisions. New Fashion Pork doesn’t invest in ESL classes from altruism — workforce stability requires communication. Workers don’t attend from ideological commitment to integration — economic survival requires English proficiency.

Immigration enforcement creates pressures that could fracture communities along cultural lines, discourage relationship building, and prevent integration. Instead, communities develop sophisticated workarounds: volunteer teaching arrangements, informal tamale economies, constitutional observer networks, employer-sponsored education programs.

But these adaptations create fragility rather than sustainability. Programs depending on volunteers collapse when teachers visit family. Informal economies operate in legal gray areas that create vulnerability rather than stability. Communities develop protective infrastructure at cultural celebrations in response to enforcement concerns.

Integration and the policy contradiction

Federal policy deepened these contradictions just weeks ago. On Oct. 30, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security eliminated automatic extensions of Employment Authorization Documents for asylum seekers, refugees, and green card applicants who file timely renewals. Previously, workers could continue working for up to 540 days while waiting for renewal approval — acknowledging that processing delays shouldn’t force legally present workers into unemployment. The change ended this safeguard. Workers who filed renewals on or after Oct. 30 now lose work authorization the day their documents expire, unable to work legally despite being legally present and having followed every requirement. While H-2B temporary workers like those in Jackson and Worthington’s meat processing plants don’t directly use EADs, the regulation affects workers transitioning between visa statuses, applying for green cards, or seeking asylum — expanding the population navigating informal economies and gray-area workarounds while waiting for government processing that can stretch 3-12 months or longer.

At the end of class, students practiced vocabulary through play, guessing each other’s favorite desserts and weekend activities. One couple passed their 6-month-old between classroom and testing space, navigating child care while pursuing economic opportunity thousands of miles from extended family.

The Arabic-speaking woman who’s been in the U.S. five years sat beside recent arrivals practicing English together. New Fashion Pork’s investment enables this democratic space — people from different countries, languages, and backgrounds learning to participate in American civic life.

But federal policy simultaneously creates challenges for what the employer enables. Qualified teachers work without pay. Spouses with professional skills cook tamales for donations. Constitutional observers position themselves at fiestas. Communities create family from friends while federal enforcement creates pressures working against those same bonds.

The contradiction creates challenges for employers needing stable workforces, communities developing integration infrastructure, immigrants seeking to contribute their skills, and stated federal policy goals of economic security and community safety.

Children carrying passports to school while playing soccer on weekends embody this tension. They grow up in communities teaching democratic participation across difference, or in communities fractured by fear of enforcement. The outcome depends on whether federal policy supports or complicates the local cooperation that economic reality requires.

Fields of Belonging is a three-part series written by Amy H. Peterson, a freelance journalist based in Estherville, Iowa, about rural communities building integration while navigating federal immigration policy. The project received financial support from the Joyce Foundation.

Next: How some rural communities navigate these contradictions more successfully than others, and what distinguishes proactive integration from reactive accommodation.

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