Thread: Hispanic Immigration's Effects Change NC Towns

http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-706954.html

Hispanic immigration's effects change some country towns in NC
Feb 28, 2006 : 7:55 am ET

WARSAW, N.C. -- North Carolina's estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants live mostly in the state's urban areas, but new arrivals also have changed some rural areas.

Duplin County has the highest rate of Hispanic residents in the state -- 17.5 percent in 2004. In Warsaw, about 70 miles southeast of Raleigh, the newcomers have reversed a population drain and boosted tax revenue. Businesses are seeing new customers and a cheap, stable labor supply.

Among longtime residents, sentiments are mixed.

Mayor Win Batten said he hears grumbling that the immigrants are straining schools and turning neighborhoods into slums by overcrowding houses and rental units.

"If we didn't have the Hispanic people here, there would be job opportunities (for others) here," Batten said. "What the county needs is more jobs and more economic development."

The Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., estimates that about half of North Carolinas Hispanic immigrants are in the United States illegally.

"Without the illegal aliens, as they call them, the local economy would be slow," said Fernando Sanchez Jr., a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico and eight years ago opened a grocery and wholesale food business catering to Hispanics.

The Hardee's restaurant on the town's busiest intersection is boarded up and the nearby Western Auto is closed. A few blocks away at Warsaw Meats, butcher Rodney Best just hired a Mexican woman named Carmen. He has placed his first orders for cows heads and chorizo -- delicacies beloved by his Hispanic patrons.

Before John Williams built Mid-Town Laundromat in 2003, the property held four trailers and was valued at $36,000. Now the property tax valuation is $391,000. Warsaw's annual tax levy on the property jumped from $212 to $2,307.

Williams sells Mexican fruit drinks and keeps a television on a Spanish-language station. The sign out front identifies the business as "lavandera," Spanish for laundromat.

"I'm very much pleased with it," Williams replied when asked how much money he's making.

Carlos Enrique Gomez, 23, said he patronizes Mid-Town because it's always clean. Gomez said he arrived in Warsaw three years ago after illegally crossing the U.S. border in Arizona. He has found work cutting trees for a contractor, and he plans to stay for another three years to save money and buy a home in his native Guatemala.

"It's very beautiful here," he said. "Very peaceful."

At first, the workers from Mexico and Central America were seasonal and worked mostly on farms, Batten said.

"They would come through the strawberries, the cucumbers and through beans, then they would go home," he said.

When poultry and hog processing grew in the 1990s, the workers started to stay year-round. Some found jobs cutting grass, cleaning offices and working in construction.

Though the Hispanic population may mean profits for some businesses and added sales tax revenue for the town, Warsaw and Duplin County remain poor.

The county's median per capita personal income was $20,827 in 2003 -- 88th among the state's 100 counties. In 2000, the median home value was $63,422 -- 87th in the state. Its property tax rate is among North Carolina's highest.

Some people say they have noticed an underlying tension between the different ethnic and racial groups.

As a child, Anthony Frederick, 41, worked alongside his sharecropper father picking whatever was growing. He has grown accustomed to seeing mostly Hispanic faces working the fields, but in the past year the work force at the local McDonald's has shifted from a majority of black teenagers to a majority of Hispanic adults, he said.

Sanchez said his customers sometimes complain of being mocked for their accents or not speaking English at other local stores.

"You can definitely feel it," Sanchez said.

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Traveling from the NC coast to the Albemarle/Troy, NC area 5 times during the past 2 months has been a real eye opener. I have taken 3 different routes to and from my destination. What I have seen in and around the smaller, rural, back home towns is very disheartening.

Someone posted a link to a map here on ALIPAC last week that showed NC with a illegal immigration population of 300,000, this article that butterbean has posted has the illegal invasion of my state at 400,000. I truly believe both are far to low.

Seeing the worn out Mobile homes with all the cars and beer cans and people around them. Seeing the males standing around the building with their cheap gaudy green, white and red signs for some strange reason reminds me of the plagues in the bible.

The failure of our Federal, State and local government to stop this plague is leading us on the fast track to destruction. Our phone calls, emails and letters are not enough. We must do more. North Carolina Lets wake up it is time to stand on the corner in front of our representatives office, photograph and post pictures of those picking up the illegal invaders for work, or just donate money to ALIPAC. We all must do what we can and all we can to stop this invasive plague infesting our state.