RIGHT SPEAK: Obama's Immigration Plan May remake Rural America

Mayor Roy Cessna looks around his small city in southwest Kansas, sees the dramatic rise in immigrants who have transformed the look and feel of it, and he smiles.

"We're a very open and progressive community," Cessna says. "We welcome new people to Garden City. It's just who we are."

Levita Rohlman Rupp, right, helps Maria Castro fill out
immigration paperwork for her daughter, who is renewing
her deportation protection under a program created by
President Obama in 2012. Castro, an undocumented immigrant,
will also qualify for the president’s new plan since she has
another child who was born in the USA.
(Photo: Alan Gomez, USA TODAY)

Roy Dixon looks at the changes, at a booming Hispanic population that over the past three decades has come to represent nearly half the city, and he shakes his head.

"I want out of here," says Dixon, a livestock management consultant. "A lot of them are good friends, don't get me wrong. But I do talk quite regular about moving to a smaller town and getting back to the rural America that I so knew."

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Illegal immigration has changed the makeup of this rural city, as undocumented immigrants have poured in to work in the cattle and drilling industries that anchor its economy. That makes it one of the places that will be most affected by President Obama's decision in November to protect up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Some say the newfound freedoms will let undocumented immigrants live more comfortably in Garden City, free of the daily worry of getting picked up by immigration agents and able to demand higher wages and get better education. Some worry that it'll cause an exodus as they seek better jobs in other parts of the country.