A crushing cynicism has enveloped North Dakota. It has been present in rural places since 1930.
The previous 40 years people were pouring into North Dakota. Homesteading, starting banks, newspapers, livery stables and then car and implement dealerships. They started township schools, schools in towns, and churches— often carrying the traditions of the countries the settlers came from.
The depression, stock market crash, and the drought financially and emotionally broke farmers. The Bank of North Dakota decided not to foreclose on farmers even though they couldn’t pay anything on their loans. But people started leaving anyway.
Mechanized agriculture changed the sociology of farming. Even when the war brought the country out of the depression and rains again produced abundant crops, the number of farms declined.
Farm size got bigger and bigger until 95 years later the land is sparsely populated with bonanza farms, each multi-million-dollar operations. Farm labor is now imported. Three-thousand South Africans help nearly 1,000 farmers operate their sprawling complex operations.
While the Bakken oil boom swelled the 2020 population past the 1930 high point, rural communities continued to lose population. I started school in Heaton, North Dakota. Heaton was North of Highway 7, now Highway 200. The Highway 7 athletic conference included teams from Mercer, McClusky, Denhoff, Goodrich, Hurdsfield, Bowdon, Heaton and Sykeston. Now in Wells County, there is only one basketball team, the Harvey Wells County Hornets. In 1959 Fessenden was joined by Manfred, Bremen, Hamberg, Heimdal, and Heaton.
In 2001 a referendum created the Fessenden Bowdon School. In 2024 the two Wells County schools, Fessenden Bowdon and Harvey, had 34 Seniors. My graduating class at Fessenden in 1967 had 33.
A Darwinian interpretation of capitalism seems to hold that it is every man for himself and let the devil take the hindermost. Get an education and get out or make your fortune and move to Florida.
Trump has cynically convinced voters our problems are due to immigrants. He campaigned on deporting illegal residents who have committed crimes. But as the readers know, he has also deported people who were legally in the United States and have not been convicted of criminal behavior.
Deportation as a political policy helped get Trump elected but as an applied policy in North Dakota, it makes no sense. We need more people not less and the 2023 legislature created the Department of Legal Immigration 90 years after Governor Langer closed it. There was an attempt in the 2025 session to abolish the department, but the legislature chose to keep it.
North Dakota’s future is dependent on people wanting to live here. Creating welcoming communities, including welcoming foreign-born families, is a key to the prosperity of North Dakota.
Instead of looking for people to kick out of the state, we should be focused on people we can bring in. International refugee camps have skilled and ambitious people who hope to find a safe place to live, and like our ancestors, prove they know how to work and be good citizens.
Instead of spending $46.5 billion on a border wall, $45 billion on detention facilities and $30 billion on customs enforcement, federal funds should be available to recruit foreign born families to come work and live in rural communities. Communities need them to staff nursing homes, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and open businesses to provide services to community members.
Imagine if rural communities in North Dakota could achieve the same growth rates as Morden and Winkler, Manitoba. North Dakota should give people a chance to prove themselves. Senator Tim Mathern says it well, “They need us and we need them”.
Bill Patrie is a retired planner and economic developer having worked in regional and statewide positions. He is the author of “Creating Co-op Fever” printed by USDA as a service bulletin, and “100 Stories of Hope” a book about his interviews with 100 people in poverty.
