The rest of us know that without them, Buena Vista County could fade away, losing population as 71 of Iowa’s 99 counties have over the last decade. Here, young immigrant families seed a positive birth-to-death ratio. Storm Lake is the rare blue oasis in Representative Steve King’s Fourth Congressional District that is growing organically — with brown babies. The crime rate here has been falling over the decade.

Mr. King is the congressman who was for building a wall before Donald Trump knew we needed one. “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” Mr. King said in 2013. He says that we should take care not to dilute our culture with immigrants, even though their culture was here before Columbus brought his.

People around here voted for Mr. Trump and Mr. King, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. They like Mr. King because they think he is a straight-talker willing to be blunt, just like President Trump. But they don’t like making soybean prices nose-dive for no understandable reason. And they don’t want to run the Julio Barrosos off to Guadalajara when we need young workers in Iowa.

A local banker, George Schaller, whose grandfather, also a George, lured meatpacking here in the 1920s, gave Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowan and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a talking-to a few weeks ago. “The short of it is that Storm Lake needs a solution to immigration, and we’ve needed one for decades,” he told the senator.

We need help in Iowa, especially in Storm Lake. Tyson needs good maintenance technicians, and will pay them more than $20 per hour. But young white workers aren’t bidding for those jobs. They’ve moved off for engineering degrees and other greener pastures.

“The jobs are there. Where are the skilled workers to fill those jobs?” the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, asked at the Peosta round table.

Where? They are in the shadows in America. Or they are in Mexico.

George Schaller and Kevin Cone don’t want to scare off the Latina attending Buena Vista University who dreams of teaching. Iowans are ashamed when refugee children are caged like criminals. We all want order at the border. And we wish that Julio could come home to Storm Lake someday.

We need him and miss him.

Art Cullen, the editor and co-owner of The Storm Lake Times in Iowa, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is the author of the forthcoming “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope From a Heartland Newspaper.”

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