SPRINGDALE, Arkansas - Melisa Laelan is a princess far from her Pacific Island home, presiding instead over a landlocked realm of grain silos and poultry processors.

Her subjects here are 4,300 Marshall Islanders - the largest enclave in the continental United States - and many of them are confounded by the culture.

"I feel obligated to protect my people," said Ms. Laelan, 34.

Her uncle is a tribal king who owns much of the land in Majuro, the capital. But Ms. Laelan herself has no riches to share. A single mother, she provides for her 7-year-old son, Zion, with money she earns as a court translator. They live in a small apartment next to an auto repair shop.

In 2005, like thousands of Marshallese before her, she came to Arkansas. Almost all of them live in this town in the northwest corner of the state, where Tyson Foods has its headquarters. They came here hoping to escape poverty and poor health: their nation ranks third in tuberculosis deaths per capita. Diabetes is rampant. Leprosy still lurks.

Tyson's minimum starting wage is $8.70 an hour, with benefits, a relative fortune for Marshallese. But many islanders must pay rent for the first time. They puzzle over the American obsession with time, and they are ignorant of bureaucracy and health care systems. Few can pass the driver's license test, which is in English.

"They don't have a word for prevention," Kathy Grisham, executive director of the local Community Clinic. "They don't have words for all the body parts."

School administrators struggle with tardiness and absences among the Marshallese. Deborah Hardwick-Smith, principal of Parson Hills Elementary School, which is 30 percent Marshallese, started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents. She created a program to educate parents about living in America.

The islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. A 1986 compact gave the United States continued military access, while the Marshallese got the right to work and live in the United States indefinitely without visas. More than a third of the Marshallese - about 20,000 - have seized the opportunity. Marshallese politicians routinely fly the 9,700 kilometers to campaign here, and in 2008 the Marshall Islands opened a consulate here above a barbershop.

The Marshallese trace their roots in Springdale to John Moody, who arrived in the 1980s to work in a Tyson plant. He sent back word of plentiful jobs.

Health care is a top concern. Ms. Laelan's mother, who was uninsured, died in Arkansas the same day that she learned that she had a brain tumor. "To this day, we are still losing people because of a lack of services," Ms. Laelan said.

A clinic that caters to the Marshallese opened in November. Ms. Laelan formed an advocacy group and has also teamed up with a Marshallese congregation of Seventh-day Adventists to plant community gardens.

Ms. Laelan is working to persuade officials to offer a Marshallese-language driver's test.

The New York Times

(China Daily 07/15/2012 page10)