Lincoln (United States) (AFP) - Ukrainians, Afghans, and Mexicans are moving to Nebraska, a conservative bastion in the central United States -- and despite Republicans' heated political rhetoric, local businesses are welcoming the new arrivals with open arms.

Far from the fiery debates of the 2024 US presidential campaign, companies short of workers in the Midwest are calling on Washington to reform the legal immigration system.

On the outskirts of state capital Lincoln, set close to the highway between fields and the local airport, stands the factory of the manufacturer Kawasaki. A banner on the fence reads: "We're hiring."

Ramiro Avalos, a Mexican immigrant, has been working there for two years, inspecting subway trains under construction that will carry commuters through bustling New York City.

Avalos originally settled in California with his wife and two children, but reassessed after paying a visit to Lincoln, a city of 300,000 inhabitants.

"The landscapes, the parks, it's quiet, no traffic, it's low-cost to live here, not too much crime," he told AFP. "We loved all those factors and we decided with my family to come here."

Avalos said he applied online to Kawasaki while still living in Los Angeles, adding he had no trouble finding a job.

"I got the interview, and got the position," he said.

Like Avalos, a third of the Kawasaki factory's employees are immigrants, according to Mike Boyle, the director of Kawasaki Lincoln.

"If we did not have that labor, we'd either have to cancel work, turn away orders, or make our products somewhere else in a different country," he said.

Boyle said he hopes that a future presidential administration, whether led by Joe Biden or Donald Trump, will "work on making legal immigration processes more easy to administer and bring more people in to the country."

This, he stressed, is a "totally separate" topic from conditions on the porous southern border. 

'Outdated'

Nebraska Chamber of Commerce president Bryan Slone has been leading a lobbying effort to convince lawmakers in Washington to change the "outdated" rules of the game for legal immigration.

"The consequences of doing nothing would be slowing our economy," he said.

"There needs to be a process for people to come into this country to be vetted, but then to get documentation and to be able to live the same quality of life that our grandparents lived when they came here as immigrants," Slone said.

Immigration has become an explosive issue in the run-up to the November 5 presidential election.

Biden has taken a tougher line on the topic in recent months, signing an executive order to limit entry at the US-Mexico border. But he has also looked to ease a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants, including the spouses of American citizens.

Donald Trump, who won 58.5 percent of the vote in Nebraska in 2020, recently accused migrants of "poisoning the blood" of the country and causing job losses for some Americans.

However, Slone said, the subject of immigration "is much bigger than the southern border." 

For Nebraska, it's a question of survival.

In sectors including manufacturing, agriculture and services, there are too few births to replace retiring baby boomers.

"There are simply not enough people entering the workforce or available on the sidelines to fill the essential jobs that keep our society functioning," Nebraska's Chamber of Commerce wrote in a recent report. 

- 'Very long' process -

However, "it can be a very long journey for people," said Mary Choate from the Lincoln-based Center for Legal Immigration Assistance, which helps foreign nationals with immigration paperwork.

In the center of Lincoln, a few blocks from the Nebraska Capitol opposite abandoned grain silos, the TMCO factory manufactures metal wares.

Inside, the facility is bathed in soft natural light, out of "concern" for employees' wellbeing, said Diane Temme-Stinton, director of the family-owned business. 

More than a third of TMCO's 230 employees are immigrants or refugees.

"Without a steady flow of immigration, we've seen much more constriction in the labor market," she said. "We need more skilled labor, we need more educated people."

Local elected representatives, meanwhile, are torn between supporting the local economy and looking with concern towards the US-Mexico border.

"By becoming a welcoming state for immigrants, Nebraska can potentially address our labor shortage and declining birth rate over time," Republican state Senator Merv Riepe told AFP, while calling for an assessment of the "anticipated social costs."

On the Democratic side, Senator Carol Blood said the US "needs to craft a better pathway to citizenship," hire more immigration judges to speed processing, and commit additional resources to the border.