[Fresh Ink] Latinos in the USA being harassed and forced to move

[Richard Menec]

Globe and Mail August 4, 2008

Latinos on the move

John Ibbitson

Manassas, VA. - People look warily at the Anglo in the good clothes,
carrying a notepad and knocking on doors along this ramshackle row of
trailer homes. Most won't talk, but Mario reluctantly answers a few
questions, with his teenage daughter acting as translator.

"The people are scared," he says. "They are moving away to states where
there is no discrimination."

Mario is a Latino immigrant, living near the edge of this city on the edge
of greater Washington. Are he and his family here legally?

"Some of us are legal," he replies. "Others are visiting."

An American flag hangs on a single-family home in this Latino neighborhood
in the Los Angeles-area city of Maywood, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Those "visiting" Latinos are fleeing Manassas. The city is in Prince William
County, a community at the forefront of a profound shift under way in
America. Large numbers of Hispanic immigrants are moving from areas hostile
to illegal immigrants to places where the laws are laxer.

Hundreds of thousands more are quitting the United States entirely and
returning to Mexico and other Latin American countries. One recent report
says 10 per cent of America's 12 million illegal Latino immigrants have fled
the country in the past 12 months.

Once again, Latino America is on the move.

Four times since 2005, Congress tried but failed to find some path to
legality for the illegal Latino immigrants in the United States. With the
federal government paralyzed, state and local governments started taking
action on their own.

In July, 2007, Prince William passed some of the strictest laws in the
country affecting undocumented workers, the euphemism for illegal
immigrants. The county created a police unit dedicated to locating illegals.
Police were ordered to check the immigration status of everyone they arrest.
Some city services are denied to anyone who cannot prove they are a legal
resident.

Although the evidence is speculative and anecdotal, the drive appears to be
working. Illegal immigrants are abandoning their homes and moving to other
counties, where there is less danger of being arrested and deported.

One in every 111 homes in the county went into foreclosure in May. As many
as 7,000 homes are thought to be vacant in the county. The crackdown isn't
the sole reason: declining housing prices have dried up construction jobs
and slowed the economy, forcing immigrants to move elsewhere in search of
work. And some of those foreclosures are victims of the bursting subprime
mortgage bubble.

But Brad Puckett can testify to the outflow firsthand. He works at a car
dealership that specializes in leasing and selling vehicles to customers
with less-than-perfect credit. A year ago, Latino customers made up 60 per
cent of the firm's business. Now it's down to 35 per cent.

"I don't believe it's the proper thing" to target illegal immigrants, he
says. "These are good people who are just trying to make a living."

Nationally, the Latino illegal-immigrant population has declined by 11 per
cent over the past 12 months, to 11.2 million from 12.5 million, according
to a study released last week by the Center for Immigration Studies, a
Washington think tank that advocates for tighter immigration controls.
Immigrants-rights advocates questioned the accuracy of the report, which is
based on Census Bureau estimates of less-educated Hispanic adults living in
the United States.

"There are huge doubts about the credibility of the analysis," maintains
Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of Agriculture Coalition for Immigration
Reform.

But "are people moving around because of shifting economic patterns, and are
some deciding to move home? Absolutely."

While it is difficult to accurately assess cause and effect, the decline
coincides with a raft of new measures to encourage illegal immigrants to
leave the country. The Department of Homeland Security has staged several
high-profile raids on workplaces harbouring large numbers of illegal
immigrants. In the first six months of this year, 39 states passed at least
175 immigration-related laws. Some of them require employers to verify the
legal status of their workers or face stiff fines or even the loss of their
business licence. Others prohibit landlords from renting apartments to
illegals. Still others require proof of legal residency before they will
issue or renew a driver's licence.

Business groups are fighting back, and have succeeded in getting several
state legislatures to modify or abandon crackdown legislation. Farming and
business groups maintain that they wouldn't be able to run their operations
without illegals. In agriculture, for example, as many as three-quarters of
farm workers are illegal, according to some estimates, although others put
the figure lower.

Nonetheless, state and municipal crackdowns on illegal immigrants are
clearly having an effect, if only to push illegals to move to places where
the laws are less strict, or at least less strictly enforced. Enrolment in
English-as-a-second-language programs in Prince William schools declined by
759 between September, 2007, and March, 2008. Neighbouring counties recorded
an almost identical increase in their ESL programs.

When the latest attempt at immigration reform failed in the Senate last
summer, pundits predicted that the issue would be front and centre during
this election campaign. It has been anything but. Both John McCain and
Barack Obama support immigration-reform legislation that would provide a
path to legality for undocumented workers.

But the Latino community already strongly supports Mr. Obama, whose campaign
is focused on reassuring blue-collar white voters that the Democratic
presidential candidate is a trustworthy choice.

Mr. McCain actually co-sponsored one of the failed immigration-reform
packages. But the Republican candidate now emphasizes cracking down on
illegals, in an effort to shore up support within the conservative base of
his party.

"It's a lose-lose situation for both of them," observes Joseph Chamie,
director of research at the Center for Migration Studies in New York. "It's
an issue that divides the country, and neither of them wants that issue to
come to the forefront, because it divides their base."

Given the emphasis that both candidates have placed on health-care reform,
fixing Social Security and reshaping energy policy, it is unlikely that
immigration reform will be a high priority during the next president's first
term. In the meantime, we should expect state and local governments to
continue cracking down, under pressure from constituents who see illegal
immigrants as unwelcome competitors for scarce jobs and government funds.

If so, predicts Mr. Regelbrugge of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration
Reform, the result will be "chaos, absolute chaos," as the supply of
low-paid, semi-skilled workers evaporates.

After all, he observes, "there's nothing we're doing here that can't be done
somewhere else in the world."

In Manassas, outside a local restaurant, five guys are piling into a pickup,
en route to a construction site.

One of them gives his name as Juan, then laughs. "Everyone is called Juan."
His friends, he says, are afraid to go looking for work for fear they will
be arrested.

"It's not good," he says. "Immigrants make the country right."

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