“They say it was just horrible because nobody spoke Spanish, if they’re coming from Mexico, coming from Chicago, they just didn’t have any realization that everything would be in English, that they wouldn’t even see a Hispanic face,” said Sister Maria Stacy, the director of the Hispanic Catholic Ministry in Dayton, about Spanish-speaking immigrants when she first arrived at the ministry, 13 years ago. “They felt they were isolated, and to get services was really difficult.”

Efforts to make immigrants in Dayton feel more welcome were, at first, rejected, such as a proposal to allow the Mexican Consulate to offer Matricula cards, which are forms of ID issued to Mexican nationals living in the United States.

Dayton is now a much more welcoming place, both Theo Majka and Sister Maria Stacy told me. In 2008, the police chief put out an executive order instructing officers not to ask the immigration status of witnesses or victims of crime. There’s an ongoing series of events at which Dayton natives meet immigrants, including an annual soccer tournament. More institutions are providing translators or documents in Spanish and other languages including Turkish, because it also has a large Ahiska Turkish population.

Dayton has led smaller Rust Belt cities in integrating immigrants. Many of its neighbors are further behind.

Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, had 21,513 Hispanic residents in 2011, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, making up 3 percent of the population. In the counties that house Ohio’s two other big cities, Cleveland and Columbus, Hispanics were 5 percent of the population in 2011. In Lucas County, where Toledo, a smaller city than Cincinnati, is located, Hispanics made up 6 percent of the population in 2011.

Immigrants from other countries were even less common. In 2000, only about 1,900 people in Hamilton County were born in China. Only about 800 were born in the Middle East. About 2,700 were born in Africa, according to this nifty map.

When Titus Nzioki moved to Cincinnati 35 years ago to attend college, there were only about 500 people born in Africa living in the county. Nzioki, born in Kenya, was an unusual college student at age 27, and worked 40 hours a week at a warehouse while he went to school full-time. He eventually saved up enough money to start his own business selling African goods, married, bought a house and raised two daughters.

But Nzioki doesn’t want to stay in Cincinnati when he retires. Everybody in America calls him “Titus” instead of his given name, “Mbindyo,” because his given name is too hard to pronounce. He says he doesn’t have friends, per se, just acquaintances with whom he exchanges pleasantries and talks about the weather. He looks forward to the vacation he takes, every year, back to Kenya.

“No matter how long I'm here, it's never going to be home,” Nzioki told me from behind the counter where he spends every day, from 10 to 8.

He has no regrets—his children had shoes and their own toys and even their own rooms, and he was able to develop a successful business in Cincinnati, but it’s been many years of long hours and he misses Kenya. He thinks he’ll go back for many months at a time when he retires, like a snow bird, and wants to be buried there. He knows how fortunate he is to be able, as a dual citizen, to have options.