immigration

I’m Mark Munger and you are listening to Check it Out.

A ship set in ice. An axe. A giant disappearing into arctic waters. Such are the uncommon beginnings to an uncommon Western. In the Distance by Hernan Diaz approaches one of the great American genres with a cold but intense embrace.

At the end of the year, the Public Safety Director and long-serving Chief of Police in Storm Lake, Iowa is retiring.  Mark Prosser moved to Storm Lake back in the fall of 1989. 

Chief Prosser talked to Siouxland Public Media’s Sheila Brummer about his career, community, his next endeavor and an issue he’s passionate about, immigration.

Chief Prosser provided a few statistics to highlight the diversity in his community.

People living in the community speak 30 different languages. 

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Michael Bloomberg has reached out to a senior Iowa Democrat in a sign that the billionaire former New York City mayor is planning a presidential campaign.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack told The Associated Press that Bloomberg telephoned him Thursday evening as reports were emerging that he was weighing a campaign. Bloomberg left a voicemail indicating he plans to run.

Bloomberg aides say he has made calls to prominent Democrats but has not made a final decision to run for president.

Hattie says that just before her mother got married, she’d left the farm to start working in a grocery in Springfield, SD, where some young men “seemed suddenly to have a greater hunger for candy and cigars.” One of those young men would become Hattie’s father, who, she says, in all candor, “had need of a girl like this." 

A century ago, when a man got to a certain age, and he came to know he’d better get somebody to help with chores--a man needed to get a wife like he needed to get a haircut. 

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4thdistrict Congressman Steve King caused another media firestorm today with his comments on race, rape, incest, and abortion. In Urbandale today, The nine-term Congressman was discussing his stance against abortion restriction laws that carve out exceptions for rape and incest when he went on to question whether such exceptions could have if honored in past civilizations, caused the end of humanity.

It’s gone now, but the recent Somalia exhibit at St. Paul's Minnesota History Center featured a Somali plow, a wooden contraption, the ox-drawn ancestor of, well, what we might see out here in Siouxland, some huge 21-bottom plow pulled along a Big Bud behemoth, 900 horsepower.

Imagine coming from a Somalian mud hut to the agri-world we live in. That massive tractor could open up more prairie in an hour than you could hope to see in a decade behind a sweaty team of oxen and that old wooden one-share doohickey.

Welcome to America.

“Consequences of the Raid,” written by Cecilia Salazar, is a story that takes place on a dairy farm in Northwest Iowa. It conveys the experiences of the farm’s hardworking immigrant employees like Claudia, her husband, Armando, and their family members and friends. It especially focuses on the horrifying day that the Immigration officer came to the farm to arrest and deport Felipe.

The story is true and is based on a raid that took place in Northwest Iowa in the winter of 2008. The names of the people it depicts have been changed. What follows is an adapted excerpt.

“Consequences of the Raid,” written by Cecilia Salazar, is a story that takes place on a dairy farm in Northwest Iowa. It conveys the experiences of the farm’s hardworking immigrant employees like Claudia, her husband, Armando, and their family members and friends. It especially focuses on the horrifying day that the Immigration officer came to the farm to arrest and deport Felipe.

The story is true and is based on a raid that took place in Northwest Iowa in the winter of 2008. The names of the people it depicts have been changed. What follows is an adapted excerpt.

“The Dove, ” written by Julie Blythe, portrays the personal histories of two Mexican teenagers: Gabi, a young woman of just 15 who lived near Acapulco, and Paco, a 19-year old man from Baja California. Separately, each youth made the difficult decision to leave the hardships of Mexico in search of a better life in the United States. They eventually meet and marry in Iowa

The following is an adapted excerpt of “The Dove.”

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This first-person narrative, simply titled “Maritza,” tells of one young immigrant's difficulties of attending an American public high school. She is a newly-arrived Nicaraguan immigrant who desires to have her peers understand her, but doubts that they could ever comprehend her family’s decision to move to the U.S.

Maritza’s story is wonderfully captured by author, Julie Blythe. The following is an adapted excerpt.

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