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Elmwood Park's shift stirs tension
Controversy divides old, new immigrants

By Colleen Mastony, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Mary Ann Fergus contributed to this report

March 14, 2006

In blue-collar Elmwood Park, families proudly talk of their immigrant roots--the grandparents who came from Italy and the ancestors who arrived through Ellis Island.

Pizza shops sit on nearly every corner, and the smell of Italian cooking carries in the air.

But as waves of newcomers from Eastern Europe and Latin America pour in, ambivalence about immigration has surfaced in Elmwood Park, and a subtle tension has taken root.

Some of that uneasiness found a focus in November when high school officials refused to enroll a 14-year-old Ecuadorean girl here on a tourist visa.

After the Illinois State Board of Education pulled $3.3 million in state aid and effectively barred Elmwood Park District 401's sports teams from competition last month, the district quickly backed down. The funding and sports programs were restored, and the controversy ended in an uneasy truce.

But the controversy has stirred strong emotions and touched off passionate debate in the west suburb.

Second-generation immigrant families, mindful of how their parents and grandparents once struggled to gain a foothold in the U.S., now find themselves arguing about the rights of new immigrants.

Among recent arrivals, some wonder if it is right to extend social services to those who subverted laws to come to this country. Others think basics such as education should be available to all, especially to children, who are not responsible for their immigration status.

At Docimos Barber Shoppe, longtime resident Joe Pellegrino Sr. said he wants the newcomers to abide by the same immigration rules that his parents did when they came from Italy.

"I think they should have thrown her out of school and kept her out," Pellegrino, 50, said of the Ecuadoreian girl. "My parents came from the old country, and they earned everything they got."

But across town, at Chavas Tacos #2, a small Mexican restaurant that opened in Elmwood Park four years ago, Juanita Mendez had a different view.

"A lot of people in the U.S. don't have papers, but they want to go to school," said Mendez, 42, who came from Mexico three decades ago. "They need an education."

The controversy has highlighted the changes taking place in Elmwood Park, where the number of immigrants doubled between 1990 and 2000 and the number of Hispanic students in the schools has increased at an even faster rate, climbing from 11 percent to 23 percent over the last seven years.

The issue is hardly unusual for a community that has seen a significant wave of immigration, said Audrey Singer, an immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"In some places, people feel like [the change] happened overnight," Singer said.

Resistance to change

In a town long proud of its ethnic identity, the demographic shift in Elmwood Park has been met with mixed emotions.

Longtime residents feel wistful about the past and acknowledge resistance to change.

Founded by Norwegians, Swedes and Germans shortly after the turn of the century, Elmwood Park by the 1950s had become dominated by Italian-American families that moved west along Grand Avenue after urban renewal projects demolished their neighborhoods in Chicago.

But the town has changed over the decades.

Though 25 percent of residents still claim Italian ancestry, the number of Polish immigrants arriving in Elmwood Park increased by 500 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to census data. People with Polish ancestry now are the second-largest group in town, accounting for 20 percent of residents.

"This was a very Italian, very Catholic neighborhood. Many of the people here knew each other from Taylor Street," said Melissa Cecola, 32. "I don't think it is like that anymore."

School district officials say they unwittingly touched off tensions on both sides of the immigration debate four years ago when they took a hard line on enrollment requirements. Initially concerned that Chicago residents were crossing Harlem Avenue to attend Elmwood Park schools, the district began asking for three forms of identification to confirm residency.

At the same time, school officials began turning away people who were here on tourist visas. District officials reasoned that if the person had a valid visa, they were not a permanent resident of the district and had no right to attend school there.

The move quickly sparked anger among new immigrants, who believed the district's actions were discriminatory.

Josefina and Luis Rodriguez, recent arrivals from Mexico, said they considered filing a lawsuit when Elmwood Park school officials refused to enroll their son in the 4th grade last fall because he was in the U.S. on a tourist visa. Wary of putting him at the center of a legal battle, and equally hesitant to put the 10-year-old into a school where he might encounter racism, they moved to Elgin.

Elmwood Park's actions were particularly hard to take because the family is here legally and has done nothing wrong, the couple said.

"I felt bad. I'm legal. My son isn't illegal," Luis Rodriguez said. "My son has permission to be in the Unites States."

Immigrants debate issue

Although many second-generation families support the school, and newer immigrants seem to back the students who were turned away, battle lines are not always clear-cut.

After the controversy erupted, students at the high school debated the issue in classrooms and hallways. Though sophomore Desire Jimenez is Mexican and Puerto Rican, she didn't feel an allegiance with new immigrants, many of whom are also Mexican.

"I'm Hispanic," said Jimenez, 16. "And I thought the school was right."

A 20-year-old woman working behind the counter at a Polish deli in Elmwood Park disagreed with the school district's action.

She said she, too, had been turned away when she tried to enroll two years ago. At the time she had recently arrived with her parents from Poland.

She tried for two months to get into school, before she gave up and eventually got a job selling newspapers and sausages at the shop.

She has been taking English classes at night and still struggles to express herself in her new language. But talking about the Elmwood Park policy on a recent day, one word came clearly to her mind.

"Discrimination," she said.

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Elmwood Park's shifting demographics

An influx of Hispanics to Elmwood Park has contributed to the suburb's changing racial composition.

POPULATION

1990: 23,206

2000: 25,405

RACE

As a percent of total population

White

1990: 94%

2000: 84.2%

Hispanic

1990: 5%

2000: 10.8%

Other

1990: 1%

2000: 5%

Sources: ESRI, TeleAtlas, U.S. Census

Chicago Tribune

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cmastony@tribune.com