Low German-speaking immigrants moving from Mexico to farm state

GARDEN CITY, Kan. -- Tina Fehr struggled to find the right English words to say how much happier she would be if her three boys could go to a German school and learn about Jesus.

The 33-year-old mother -- clad in a simple homespun dress and the traditional Mennonite black cap -- talked about how excited the children were because they would go into town that day and buy school supplies.

"I wish they prayed, too, in public schools -- I guess they don't like to," she said haltingly.

Fehr slipped into her native low German dialect to give a restless child some instructions. He scampered away to find his brothers.

Outside the old farmhouse, Fehr's 35-year-old husband, Peter, drove a tractor around his employer's field spreading fertilizer. Farm work comes naturally to Peter Fehr -- about 90 percent of his Old Colony Mennonite settlement where the couple used to live near Chihuahua, Mexico, were farmers.

Driven by drought

The Fehrs are among thousands of low German-speaking migrants -- also known as Mexican Mennonites -- that have moved to Kansas and other rural states in search of farm work. The group is being driven northward by drought and the poor Mexican economy.

Low Germans have quickly built a reputation in the United States for being good workers. And with their agricultural background, they're much sought after by U.S. farmers looking for good farm labor.

Peter Fehr has worked on Loren Miller's farm for six of the eight years the family -- which has grown to include Ernie, 3; Henry, 7; and Peter, 9 -- has been in Kansas.

Miller was thrilled to hire Fehr.

"He has ambition. He is a straightlaced fellow. He is quite honest. He has a desire to get something done," Miller said.

Just five years ago, about 7 percent of the people served by the Kansas State Farm Worker Health Program were low-German immigrants compared to 28 percent today, said program manager Cyndi Treaster.

"They are displacing many of the Spanish-speaking immigrants in agricultural work out there," she said.

The low Germans migrating to Kansas from Mexico are Old Colony Mennonites who settled in Mexico from Manitoba, Canada in the 1920s. They were part of the Russian Mennonites who first settled in Manitoba in 1874.

Low German dialects are spoken from the Dutch border in northern Germany to the Vistula Delta of West Prussia, which is now Poland, according to Linguistic Atlas of Kansas German Dialects produced by the University of Kansas.

No one knows for sure how many Mexican Mennonites are in Kansas. Most estimates put their numbers between 3,000 and 4,000, Treaster said. Large families with six or seven children are common.

Speaking 'plautdietsch'

Many low Germans are undocumented workers. Their dialect -- also known as plautdietsch -- is so different from even standard German that it's hard for those who don't know their language to communicate with them. Only a few low Germans speak Spanish and many of their children are home-schooled or educated in their own private, religious schools.

Those factors -- coupled with the fact that low Germans typically keep to themselves and shun "worldly" contact -- have made them one of the most unnoticed migrant populations in Kansas, said Don Blackman, a retired Garden City English-as-a-second-language teacher.

But that's changing rapidly as more low German families settle in southwest Kansas and their children enter public schools, said Mike O'Toole, educational consultant for the Southwest Plains Regional Service Center, an education cooperative based in Sublette.

"I don't think any of the schools were prepared for it," O'Toole said of the influx of students who speak the low German language. "It was something that happened very gradually. And then it started growing very rapidly."

The native low German language is primarily an oral language, Blackman said. Some low Germans can read standard German or Spanish. But less than 10 percent of them can read in any language.

The Fehrs said language has been a challenge since moving to Kansas but they don't regret their decision.

After three bad crops in Mexico, the Fehrs owed a lot of money to a Mexican bank. For three straight weeks, Peter Fehr would go out to his drought-stricken field and come home to tell his wife he would wait another week before deciding to sell out.

Finally, he told his wife they just couldn't do it anymore.

"We concluded there was no way to get food on the table," Peter Fehr said.

That was in 1994. The couple sold their tractor and everything they owned to pay the bank. They had $1,500 left. The couple move to Kansas where Tina Fehr's brother lives. Peter Fehr found work in just 10 days.

Some low Germans, like Tina Fehr, have kept their Canadian citizenship although they were born in Mexico. But many others are like Peter Fehr, who is a Mexican citizen because his parents didn't file the necessary paperwork to register him as a Canadian when he was born.

Many low German families have settled in Sublette, Copeland, Montezuma, Garden City, Holcomb, Elkhart and other farming communities throughout southwest Kansas.

Some Mexican Mennonites are also moving to Kansas from an earlier settlement established in Seminole, Texas, Blackman said.

Helen Loewen of Copeland, a Mexico-born low German who grew up in the Seminole settlement, moved to Kansas after she met and married her husband, Henry.

The Loewens travel to Sublette to attend church at one of the more progressive of the Mexican Mennonite churches in Kansas. Helen Loewen no longer wears the traditional dress and head covering of her culture, and said her fellow low Germans haven't always supported that decision.

But as more low Germans leave their isolated settlements and spread out across Kansas, more are shedding the traditional dress, learning English and sending their children to public schools.

"It is somewhat easier to do that here than in Mexico," Loewen said. "Some still fear going back to Mexico to meet their parents and getting a good scolding."