Kansas health officials trying to help ‘Mexican Mennonites’

Though the number is impossible to pinpoint, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Low German Mennonites, distinct for their language and religion, have started settlements in southwest Kansas, said Cyndi Treaster, director of the Farmworker, Immigrant and Refugee Health Section in the Office of Local and Rural Health at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

“The last time Low German Mennonites settled in Kansas was in the 1800s,” said William Keel, a professor of German at The University of Kansas, referring to a group that settled on farms in central Kansas. “This is like the 19th century all over again.”"*

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