Boom and Bust<br/><span class='hl2'>Two towns. Two companies. Two different ways of life. Their fates both hinge on immigration. </span>

GUYMON — On a recent weekday, at least five of this agricultural community's hotels were booked. Room rates ranged from $54 — for motor lodge-like accommodations — to $80 at the Comfort Inn.

A block behind U.S. 54, makeshift campgrounds were also full. Some RVs carried heat-seeking snowbirds. Most campers were construction crews from as far away as New Mexico. Seaboard Farms already employs about half the 10,000-person town. The out-of-state construction crews were in Guymon to help build a bio-diesel plant for the company.

"I'm grateful for Seaboard,” said Judy Beasley, of Guymon, who manages a local restaurant there. "If it weren't for Seaboard, Guymon would be a ghost town. Guymon would be just like Hooker.”

Tale of two cities

Guymon is booming. Just 18 miles northeast on U.S. 54 is Hooker, population 1,733. Its downtown, just three blocks long, is empty. Out-of-business signs cover the fronts of a dozen businesses.

In the high plains of the Panhandle, many rural agricultural communities like Hooker and Guymon struggle to reinvent themselves. In some cases, immigrant workers and the industries that employ them have been the difference between boom and bust.

Here, immigration is not just about politics. It's about opportunity, economic development and change. It's about survival.

Hooker: Bust town

Hooker, like many rural Southwest communities, is aging. It's diminished a bit further with each funeral. Children grow up and move away, few return. Those who remain commute for work: Some off to Guymon to work at Seaboard, others to Liberal, Kan., to work at National Beef.

There, hopes of reversing the trend of dwindling population and commerce has hinged on immigration.

Plans dry up

Smithfield Foods had planned to open a meatpacking plant in Hooker. It would have brought revenue, about 3,500 employees just to work the plant, and up to as many as 10,000 new community residents.

A few months ago, however, Smithfield abruptly shelved those plans. Company officials stopped returning phone calls from Hooker city leaders about the same time its North Carolina meat plant was busted in a massive

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