As Missouri towns continue to look to meat-packing plants for their economic survival, Milan regards its 10-year relationship with Premium Standard Farms’ hog processing plant with a mixture of gratitude and resignation.

Milan's residents credit PSF for saving their town, but culture and language have split Milan in two as the Hispanic population has increased from a fraction of 1 percent to 20 percent. Education and health care providers have had to seek outside help to bridge the gap between whites and the mostly Mexican workers who came for jobs at the plant.

The result is a different Milan, dominated by one big employer and living with what some describe as a devil's bargain.

Still, Robert Wilson, editor of the Milan Standard, said it would be hard to find anyone who opposed the plant in 1994. Most thought it would provide jobs and give Milan's businesses a boost. When the plant began operations, managers said they would hire about 500 workers from the area.

As production increased, Hispanic workers were recruited from Texas. Their numbers surprised Wilson and other residents of the town, he said. “I doubt that very many (Milan residents expected the influx) — I hadn’t even thought about it,” he said.

“There probably were several (residents) that didn't want (Hispanics),” he said.

One thing is clear: PSF and its workers have kept Milan alive. The town’s population has increased 8 percent in the last 10 years. Its total assessed property value has almost doubled since 1990, four years before PSF moved in. City sales tax revenue in 2004 was 35 percent higher than in 1993. Personal property tax revenue has increased more than 68 percent.

“It’s been an economic boost for all the businesses,” Wilson said. “It’s providing 1,000 jobs.”

But, Sullivan County Clerk Mike Hepler said, because the PSF plant sits just outside the city limits, there is “absolutely no direct (financial) benefit to Milan.”

Besides sales tax revenue from workers spending money in Milan, increased water sales, and a little tax revenue from business equipment, tax revenue from PSF mostly goes to the county and to fund public services.

PSF’s management said the company has helped Milan grow and adapt to Hispanics through its “quality of life” programs by donating money to the Centro Latino, sponsoring programs that help Hispanics, and partnering with real estate developers to build more houses and apartments. However, PSF's management said they haven't directly funded the new developments.

No frills

SEAN McGANN/Adelante
From El Salvador to Milan: Julio Ramos, a 42-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, was waiting for a visa that would alow him to travel outside the United States. He hoped to return home to visit his mother, wife and daughter. He hadn’t seen his family in five years but sends them half his pay.

Many of PSF’s workers live in Milan’s older buildings, such as Julio Ramos, who lives in a three-story complex half a block from the town square. Just past the front door, where a wheel from an office chair serves as a doorknob, and up a narrow staircase, Ramos and two other workers live in a studio apartment. Inside, two unmade beds occupy most of what would be the living room. Ramos admits that with three people, it's crowded. But he's not in it for the frills.

Ramos has worked at PSF for three years, supporting his family in El Salvador by sending them over half of the $1,500 he makes every month.

Fourteen years ago in El Salvador, Ramos left his wife, daughter and everything he knew. His position in the country's Guardia Nacional (National Guard) paid him the equivalent of $70 per month. "This money was too little," he said. He decided that his family would need more to survive, so he set out on a long journey.

First, he traveled more than 70 hours by bus to Tijuana, Mexico. Then he paid a "coyote" $1,500 to guide him across the border at night. He considers himself one of the lucky ones.

"There are a lot of people who come to the United States. They don't arrive, and they don't return," he said. "My trip was easy."

He went to live with his with his sister in Los Angeles and promptly visited an immigration lawyer, who helped him gain political asylum status on the basis of the war in his homeland. In Los Angeles, he worked in a Mexican restaurant as a busboy for 10 years and then in a meat packing plant in Iowa City, which promised more work and higher pay. After a year and a half, a friend who had lived in Milan told him about the PSF plant. He decided to go.

"The job is hard," he said. "My hands and body hurt most of the time. They pay well because some people have hurt their bodies."

Ramos said that some of his co-workers are showing signs of illness because of the repetitive work. "I've seen people that have knots on their hands," he said. "There are a lot of workers who look like they have arthritis."

He said he knows people who have been injured at the plant, but in four years, he said, "I have never had an accident."

A Government Accountability Office study released in January 2005 reported that musculoskeletal disorders, such as carpal tunnel and arthritis, are prevalent in the meat packing industry. "The rate of injuries and illnesses involving repetitive motion in the meat and poultry industry … was one and a half times greater than the rate … for all U.S. manufacturing in 2002."

Ramos doesn't complain about the work, though. Quitting is not an option because without his salary, he said in Spanish, "my family wouldn't eat there."

In his three years at PSF, Ramos has saved $10,000. With PSF's permission, he plans to take a month off work soon and travel back to his home. He hopes to visit his mother who is ill with heart problems. If he makes the trip, he will see his wife and daughter for the first time in five years.
But he doesn't expect to ever return home permanently. "El Salvador is a small country, and there are a lot of people," he said. "There are no jobs there." Instead he hopes to bring his family to Milan in the summer and buy a house.

His daughter, now 10 years old, would enter Milan Elementary School where she would find among her classmates almost 200 other Hispanic children whose parents have decided Milan is as good a place as any to make a living.

Education en EspaÑol

ADAM WISNESKI/Adelante
Tapping into English: Juan Garcia, 5, turns the page of the English lesson book "Tap, Tap, Tap" in an afternoon ESL class on April 27. Milan Elementary's ESL teachers work with 16 other students who didn't any speak English when they came to Milan.

At the school, Pam Doty, Spanish-English dictionary in hand, crouches by Juan Garcia's desk as he clutches his pencil and presses it unsteadily to unlined paper. The task is to write a sentence using question words, and Juan, 5, tries to relate his sentence to the stick-figure spider he has already drawn.

When he entered Milan Elementary's kindergarten class in September, Juan didn't speak English. He survived in class by mimicking what other students around him did. Now, the words he painstakingly puts down on paper don't look much different from those of the other 5-year-olds in the room.
Milan's school yearbook is full of faces from around the Americas. Juan is one of 180 Hispanic students in the Milan C-2 school district. Hispanics account for 26 percent of Milan's 680 students, up from 17 percent in 2001. Of the 180 Hispanic students, there are 16 students like Juan who spoke no English when they entered school.

The influx of Hispanics has challenged Milan C-2 to keep up. Susan Weece, who taught English for 10 years in Honduras, has been a translator-interpreter at the Milan school for two years. "I think the ESL program makes them feel comfortable," she said. "I am amazed at what the program is accomplishing."

She said ESL teachers work with new non-English-speaking students two to three hours per day to get them caught up as quickly as possible. Elementary school Principal Beverly Bonner said that extra funding to hire ESL teachers came from federal grants. Milan C-2 currently has two translators and two teachers' aides who support and interpret for some of Milan's Hispanic students and parents.

"He had a little problem adapting," Weece said of Juan. "He would hit or bite anyone who was trying to help him … he didn't know what they were doing and he was afraid."

Superintendent Bill Lewis said the school is meeting the needs of the English Language Learners (ELL). "We're making an inroad to reading," he said. "We think we are making great success stories." Last year, Missouri received $17 million from the federal Reading First grant. Milan elementary, now in its second year as a Reading First school, was granted $129,000.
Doty said that materials aren't an issue for the ESL office."We have so many [resources] that we don't know what to choose from," she said.

But meeting ELL needs is an ongoing process that Milan has just begun. It might be easier for Hispanic students to succeed in lower grades, Lewis said, than in high school where there are greater social barriers that might affect students. "They tend to segregate themselves when given the opportunity," he said.

Some Hispanic students "are inclined to drop out when they are 16 because they want to go get a job and make money," he said. Lewis has observed that for some Hispanic families from "poverty stricken" areas, financial survival seems more important than high school.

In 2004, Milan High School's graduation rate among Hispanics was 55.6 percent, compared to a white graduation rate of 91 percent. In grades 9 through 12, Milan's Hispanics are five times more likely to drop out than whites.

Another challenge is the more transient nature of the Hispanic student population, Weece said. About 18 percent of Milan's Hispanic students come from migrant families. "There are some children that fall through the cracks," she said, noting that some kids are held back because they have left other schools during the school year. "It's hard to understand how much school [they] have finished."

Hispanics and Health
In Joan Harrison's nurse's office at Milan Elementary, Eric lies motionless on the examining table along the wall. He doesn't say much, focusing most of his energy on blocking out the chatter in the room. Harrison says she hopes the boy's parents will take him to see a doctor. "It's frustrating when you see a 102-degree fever," she says, nodding discreetly in Eric's direction.

Eric's mom arrives and mumbles to him in Spanish about how he is feeling, then switches to English to ask Harrison if Eric has a fever. Harrison says he does and turns to wash her hands as mother and son make their way out of the office. "You ought to go to the doctor, Eric," Harrison says without turning her head from the sink. But when asked if she thinks they will, Harrison says frankly, "Probably not."

For four years, Harrison has been the school nurse at Milan C-2. "I had never been exposed to the Hispanic population until here," she said. "I went to a school where different cultures were unheard of."

Harrison said that about two years ago, she had problems getting parents who worked at PSF to come up and pick up their sick children. "In the beginning it was an issue," she said. "Parents would tell me, 'I can't come or I'll get fired.'"

Harrison said she talked face-to-face with a PSF manager, and the problem was resolved.

But adjusting to Hispanics' expectations of medical care continues to be a challenge. Harrison said she thinks Hispanics' views of doctors and medication is different from that of most whites. "I think there's a cultural barrier … a nurse is not the same as a doctor. Sometimes they think I can do more for [their kids] than I can," she said. They also seem less likely to seek medical attention, she said. "I wonder how much of it is religion and culture."

"I think a lot of that is because of money," said Connie Michaels, Sullivan County Health Department administrator, who has worked in Milan for 20 years. She said she thinks Hispanics are reluctant to seek medical attention because they simply can't afford it.

"They have to work three to six months at PSF to get benefits," she said.
Michaels said the health department's clinic serves many non-English speaking Hispanics. Next month, she plans to hire a full-time translator and put an end to what have become known as "Hispanic Thursdays," when Hispanics can talk to Michaels' part-time interpreter about everything from vaccinations to infant care.

A survey of Hispanics by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2002 found that 65 percent of Hispanics had no health insurance. Twenty percent said they had postponed necessary medical treatment because they felt they couldn't afford it. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanics reported having had trouble communicating with providers and getting health care.

That communication barrier troubles Eugene Richardson, who has been administrator for the Sullivan County Ambulance District for the past two years. He said he would like to offer some Spanish language training for his employees. "As far as the bilingual aspect, I haven't quite found a way over that bridge," he said.

None of Sullivan County's ambulance personnel speak Spanish. "We are of limited resources," he said. "We cover all of Sullivan County -- that's a lot."

He estimates that about half the Hispanics he has served have health insurance. Many rely on Medicaid, he said.

Richardson said in his 35 years in the field, he hasn't encountered a situation in which he couldn't provide care to a non-English speaker. "[You look for] outward physical signs," he said. "It's not what you say, it's what you see."

Next year, he plans to apply for grant money to provide Spanish classes for his employees.

Triumph in St. Joseph
Meanwhile, in St. Joseph, about 45 minutes north of Kansas City, preparations are under way for the arrival of Triumph Foods, a $135 million pork processing facility and corporate headquarters scheduled to open this fall. The company, formerly known as Premium Pork Allied Producers, will hire 400 to 500 workers for the 630,000-square-foot facility, with a projected total work force of 1,000 within two years.

The project was listed as one of the largest planned economic developments in the United States in 2003, according to the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce.

Patt Lilly, the chamber's president and CEO, said the chamber worked hard to attract the plant to the town and help the company find a location for the plant. After approval by the city council, the company was offered a $5.5 million incentive package to offset costs related to acquiring the land for the site, demolishing existing facilities, and improving transportation accessibility and wastewater treatment systems. The package was offered in the form of a grant, which Lilly said will be paid back to the city by Triumph in the form of taxes.

Triumph Foods will be located in what was once the site of the city's stockyards and meat-packing facilities in the '20s and '30s, a "blighted area," as Lilly says, that was "in desperate need of investment."

While meat-packing plants have attracted migrant workers, predominantly Hispanics, across the country, Lilly said he believes that most of the workforce will come from St. Joseph, citing the city's unemployment rate of 3.9 percent in a population of nearly 75,000. The Hispanic population of St. Joseph in 2000 was 2.6 percent, according to the census. In an agreement with the city, Triumph Foods has pledged to pay a base wage of $10.50 per hour, attractive starting pay within the industry.

Lilly said he believed that St. Joseph's size and diverse economy -- which includes several other food processing companies as well as insurance and automotive industries -- will balance out the big plant's effect on the town.

Schools in St. Joseph have already begun to prepare for the likely influx of Hispanics and their children. Mark Hargens, associate superintendent for St. Joseph Schools, said the district has been making plans since learning of the plant's intentions to locate in the community.

"We want to be in place in case families start coming," he said.

One of the ways the schools are getting ready is by employing more ESL-certified teachers, with the eventual goal to have one teacher in every building who is certified. In August, the district will open a welcome center for families with students who need of ESL. The center will have a coordinator who supervises two teachers and a secretary, all of whom will have Spanish-speaking abilities. Hargens said that before the plant's arrival, the district had only one ESL teacher for the entire district.

Hargens said further expansion of ESL services will depend on how many Hispanics come to St. Joseph. If the number continues to rise, the number of ESL centers will increase to seven, with four dedicated to elementary students, two to middle school students and one for high school students. Hargens said the district is taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether to implement this plan.

"If you have a bunch of teachers and open centers and nobody comes, people might be a little upset," Hargens said.

As much as schools or any sector can plan for the influx of Hispanics, unexpected needs and changes are bound to happen, he said: "Having never had a large population of Hispanics, I'm sure we haven't anticipated half of the things that will go on."