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Bloomberg article's attention-grabbing headline highlights Kansas ag's need for immigrants

NY - HTTP://NYPHOTOGRAPHIC.COM/

‘I need more Mexicans.’

Several southwest Kansans are featured in a June 20 Bloomberg Businessweek article with that headline – a message the article reports Kansas farmers are sending to President Donald Trump.

According to Blooomberg, arrests of suspected undocumented workers have jumped 38 percent since Trump signed a pair of executive orders targeting immigration in January. This has some in the state worried about the impact on the rural economy.

In Haskell County, for instance, where 77 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump, the county’s largest employer, Cattle Empire, whose workforce is about 86 percent Latino, is as concerned about the impact as anyone.

And according to the article, Rep. Roger Marshall of the big first district, which includes southwest Kansas, says immigration is the number  one concern he hears about from his constituents.

The article also features farm and dairy groups, a Cimarron immigration lawyer who says he is seeing a lot more people asking about naturalization questions and an anonymous undocumented immigrant currently employed in a southwest Kansas agriculture operation.