I recently read a comment from one of our experts who said the flood of migrants at our southern border could easily be settled in a certain Midwestern "fly-over" state, where there is an abundance of land.  Obviously, this person has never visited the heartland where I grew up.

Our county ranked 10th in population in the state.  The county had two principal cities, two secondary cities, and numerous smaller communities.  Many of the people stilled lived on small, family-owned farms.  We still had many smaller two-room schools outside the established communities.  If people worked off the farm, it was at the local refinery, the cement plant, or other of the small  businesses that produced the goods and services we needed.  One of the principal communities had a Coca-Cola plant and a Montgomery Ward store.  The other had a Pepsi-Cola plant and a Sears store.  Both had busy downtown areas filled with shops providing us with everything from dry goods to screws and bolts.  Almost all the businesses were locally owned and operated.  Many people visited the principal cities only a few times a year, as they could generally get most of the goods and services they needed from stores in the small communities.  The farm machinery stores were the most frequented.

We had one of the larger farms and survived for several years, beyond some others, as we did a lot of commercial farming.  I can remember my father going to town in the morning to get a crew of day laborers.  It was not unusual for us to have 10 to 20 working on a given day.  Today, my brother does this same work by himself from the comfort of his air-conditioned tractor.

In the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to visit some of the heartland, away from my comfortable suburban home in a large metropolitan area.  What I saw was empty stores and boarded up houses, communities without hospitals or, in many cases, not even emergency care.  The people have moved to larger communities, as they no longer have to be so close to their farmland.  They have raised their children and seen them go off to colleges where they earned degrees offering employment only in the larger cities.  The quality of the schools has deteriorated because they cannot attract top-level graduates willing to live in the small communities.  Those still living in these more rural areas must often travel many miles, in some cases up to 80 miles per day, each direction, to find employment that allows them to stay in the still shrinking smaller communities.  There is very little demand for petroleum engineers in most areas, as their centers for employment are the large cities.  This is true for most who go off to college.

Yes, the heartland could stand an infusion of new people.  All it would take is for businesses to locate in these more rural areas.  This would provide jobs but would require building new infrastructure to support them.  New residents would require new schools, which would require more teachers.  New residents would require water, sewer, and electricity.  There would need to be new shops opened to provide them the goods and services they would need.  But, most critically, the new immigrants (we'll call them) would need to be willing to live in these smaller communities and be trained for the jobs that might be made available.  They would need to learn the language and culture of rural America and be comfortable with it.

But American business and industry have been going the other direction — larger plants in fewer locations serving larger areas.  Modernization has reduced the demand for "common labor," and I would guess that many of these new immigrants are not equipped to fill such jobs without training..

That said, what can we do?  First, we must retake control of our southern (and possibly now the northern) border.  We must then identify the skills industry today requires and prepare our population to fill the positions.  No longer may we be able to send everyone to college because traditional college training is not required.  I have recently had contact with a number of people working in medical jobs that did not exist when I was young.  They received their training at community colleges or private schools within much shorter timeframes than required for traditional college.  Second, we must become proactive and speak out to elect officials who will govern in accordance with our wishes.  We must stop listening to the mainstream media and return to thinking for ourselves, and then making sure our positions are recognized and implemented.

Yes, we can return our nation to the greatness so many of us remember, but we must act now.

Mr. McCorkill is a first-time contributor but longtime follower of American Thinker.  He is a graduate of the University of  Missouri and the University of Kansas.  He served as a local government manager, operated his own business, and had a career as a teacher and education administrator.  He may be reached at tmccorkill42@gmail.com.

Image via Pxfuel.