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Sioux Falls, South Dakota has been dubbed the Ellis Island of the Great Plains. The World’s Jason Margolis reports on how North and South Dakota have become centers for refugee resettlement.

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LISA MULLINS: You might not be surprised to hear some Hebrew spoken in South Dakota. But what about Swahili? Or Burmese? Well you might hear them and a lot of other languages. That’s because North and South Dakota have become a hub for refugees resettling here in the United States. The World’s Jason Margolis tells us why.

JASON MARGOLIS: In recent years Sioux Falls, South Dakota, population 154,000 has been dubbed the Ellis Island of the Great Plains.

JANICE ANTRIM: Sioux Falls has immigrants and refugees from over 95 different countries.

MARGOLIS: Janice Antrim is driving me around her city. She says these days there are 125 different languages and dialects spoken here. Antrim works for the multicultural center and helps immigrants and refugees adjust to their new lives.

[SOUND CLIP: Hi. How are you? Good. What are you guys up to?]

At dusk we drive through an apartment complex where children are playing the parking lot. Young Somali girls are wearing multi-colored scarves and jewelry. Boys from Tanzania and Burundi take turns on a big wheel zooming down a steep driveway.

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It’s an unusual sight. After all, the Dakotas are about 90% white. There’s a reason why the parents of these children settled here, or rather several reasons why, says another immigrant services provider Donna Magnuson.

DONNA MAGNUSON: I can tell you, you know, the top five answers I’m going to get are it’s a safe place to walk the streets; there’s good schools for my children; housing is affordable; cost of living is relatively affordable; and I can get a job.

MARGOLIS: Sioux Falls has a big meat packing plant and there’s a turkey plant not far away. Many refugees also work in places like Wal-Mart and JC Penny. On a weekday morning Donna Magnuson’s office, the Refugee and Immigration Center, is bustling with activity. Case workers are helping refugees find work and housing. Dividing up where refugees go starts in Washington. Each year the White House proposed the number of refugees that will be admitted into the country. In recent years that number has been around 70,000. Ten national agencies then decide on which of their local affiliates, places like Magnuson’s center, can best accommodate refugees.

MAGNUSON: This year we’re on target for about 430 individuals to the state of South Dakota.

MARGOLIS: That’s almost double the number the state took in just two years ago. Compare that with traditional refugee beacons like Los Angeles where the placement numbers are dramatically down. Magnuson says South Dakota is absorbing more refugees because there are jobs during the recession.

MAGNUSON: Definitely economically we’ve been hit like the rest of the nation but maybe not hit quite as hard. So yeah are we a good place for resettlement? In my opinion absolutely, as long as there is employment.

MARGOLIS: In the Dakotas unemployment is around 5%, roughly half the national average. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

RICHARD RATHGE: And now we have what’s really quite interesting, an unemployment problem in the sense that we have too little unemployment.

MARGOLIS: That’s Richard Rathge, North Dakota’s state demographer. He explains that the population in the upper Great Plains peaked in the 1930s and there’s been a steady exodus of people ever since.

RATHGE: Let’s go back in history a little bit. The Great Plains is really dominated by an industry that most of us cherish which is agriculture. Technology has transformed agriculture in a very meaningful way by allowing the operators to operate much larger tracks of land, much more efficiently. The result of that is that we moved many of those farmers out of North Dakota and of South Dakota and the Great Plains in general.

MARGOLIS: The result? Today the Dakotas badly need immigrants and refugees for new agricultural jobs like food processing. Their getting more of those workers because of the recession and unemployment elsewhere.

RATHGE: Any time we can import labor it’s to our advantage.

MARGOLIS: Eventually though the recession will end. Then comes the hard part says Rathge – keeping refugees in a place like North Dakota.

RATHGE: Sometimes there’s some misconceptions here that, ah we have captured population and we don’t’ have to provide them the same opportunities as other people. Well that’s certainly not true. It’s always the incentives that you need to think about.

MARGOLIS: In other words when the jobs do come back to sunny, exciting, and ethnically diverse Los Angeles how do you convince a refugee that freezing in North Dakota is the right move for them? It goes back to what refugee coordinator Donna Magnuson says – safe streets, good schools, and affordable housing. For The World I’m Jason Margolis, Fargo, North Dakota.

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