Thread: How to handle immigration splits Floridians

How to handle immigration splits Floridians

Victor Manuel Ramos | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted April 2, 2006


If immigration reform forces the approximately 880,000 people living illegally in Florida to leave, under one worst-case scenario, oranges would rot with no one to pick them.

Home building would slow to a crawl. Many hotels and restaurants would close, ultimately hurting tourism and rippling through communities across the state.

That's the view from the industries that drive Florida's growth as they worry that Congress could approve some of the toughest restrictions on immigration in decades.

Supporters of restricting immigration, however, argue that giving the nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the United States a path to legalization, and eventually citizenship, would cost billions more in medical care, housing, Social Security and other benefits.

And those workers, in combination with millions more who would join them here, would drive wages down, likely forcing more U.S. citizens out of jobs.

Whatever happens in Washington, it is bound to have a lasting impact in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush said last week. The state ranks third behind California and Texas as a destination for illegal immigrants.

Bush -- not unlike his brother in the White House -- said he supports a combination of enhanced border security, a guest-worker program and some way to deal with immigrants already here.

"There has to be some change in their status, and there has to be some way that we deal with them," the governor said. "We deal with them, because we pay . . . the social costs associated with it -- their children go to our schools, many of them have been here for 10 to 15 years, and there has to be a solution to that."

'Treated like criminals'

Legalization would also mean that people such as Jeremy Perez, a Central Florida immigrant, could eventually petition for his wife, two daughters and parents to come to the U.S.

"We have to come here," said Perez, a construction worker who was attending night English classes on a recent evening. Four years after crossing the border illegally, he is still paying a $3,000 smuggling debt that ballooned to $6,000 with interest.

"We have to do it because of need," said Perez, 30, who migrated after struggling through six months of unemployment in Guatemala. "It bothers us to be treated like criminals because we have come to earn our daily bread honestly, and we know that work is blessed by God."

Debate heated up in recent weeks as the Senate took up its own proposals for reforming immigration laws, including a guest-worker program.

Millions in U.S. illegally

The latest estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center research group in Washington show that there are 11.5 million to 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, with about 9 percent of those living in Florida. National numbers show most of those immigrants are from Latin America, especially Mexico.

In Central Florida, the Mexican population has grown steadily, even as immigrants from other Central and South American countries settle here. Thousands of Haitians have also moved to the Orlando metro area. Those groups contribute to the size of the state's undocumented population.

Several of Florida's key sectors, such as the $9 billion citrus industry, have come to depend on that labor pool.

"It's somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of our work force who are considered illegal right now," said Jay Clark, CEO of the Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual. "If you take them out of the picture, it would shut citrus down."

Even paying hourly rates ranging from $10 to $15 an hour, said Mark Wylie, president of the Central Florida chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, his members cannot seem to find many others willing to do the heavy-lifting, dusty and dirty construction work in the hot sun.

"They are not coming here to use our social-welfare system, not to take advantage of our largess, but coming for jobs," Wylie said. "Many are illiterate in their own countries and don't have a lot of skills, but they have a work ethic."

Other groups say illegal immigrants may make up only 5 percent of the national work force, but they're still squeezing others out of work.

"The argument that illegal aliens are doing jobs that Americans won't do is not only false," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "Third World workers come in by the millions and are willing to work for low wages, but it didn't happen overnight that Americans got up one day and said, 'I won't work in construction.' They are being driven out of jobs by the sheer volume."

'Exploiting some fears'

The support of some business interests for legalizing immigrants and allowing guest workers matches that of advocacy groups such as the Association of Communities for Reform Now, farmworker associations, immigration attorneys and the Roman Catholic Church.

"When [Sen. Edward] Kennedy and [Sen. John] McCain agree, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the unions agree, it must be a slam-dunk, you would think," said Bishop Thomas Wenski, head of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando and part of a Central Florida coalition for immigration reform. "But, obviously, some people are exploiting some fears and also some thinly disguised neo-nativist feelings."

Recent studies show that illegal immigrants no longer fit the stereotype of being primarily young men who cross the border to eventually return to Mexico. Women were 42 percent of the population. And those immigrants have 5 million children -- most of them American citizens, born on this side of the border.

As they grow in number, immigrant workers and their families are forming networks of labor-rights groups and religious organizations. They have also changed the flavor of communities such as Apopka in Orange County, Pierson in Volusia County and Winter Haven in Polk County -- where shops, clinics and charitable groups have taken root, partly to serve their needs.

When she arrived in the United States from Michoacan, Mexico, 19 years ago, Antonia Padilla De Cardenas said, she got her immigration papers within three months.

Many immigrants gained legal status under previous amnesty and legalization programs -- such as during the Reagan administration in 1986, when more than 2 million illegal immigrants obtained their papers; or in 1994 and 2000, under smaller programs during the Clinton administration.

Padilla's five siblings weren't so fortunate when they came later. They are still in the country illegally.

The 35-year-old woman, who lives in Astor but works at a nearby nursery, said her siblings' lack of documentation makes things hard for the family.

"No one will sell them cars because they don't have Social Security papers -- or a house," Padilla said in Spanish as she waited outside the Pierson Medical Center with her daughter Jennifer.

Poll shows division

A national poll released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that the American public is divided about the issue, with 53 percent saying illegal immigrants should be sent back home. But when those same people considered the current immigration proposals, they split three ways about whether illegal immigrants should stay permanently, temporarily under guest-worker programs or deported.

The immigrants who live here illegally have added their voices to the debate, participating in rallies throughout the country.

"It's sad to live without papers," said Lourdes Bautista, a single mother who works in Volusia County. She lives in fear of deportation and cannot do things others take for granted, such as getting a drivers license. "I feel like a criminal. I want amnesty so I can get my papers."

Erin Ailworth of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Victor Manuel Ramos can be reached at 407-420-6186 or vramos@orlandosentinel.com.


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PLEASE.....I lived in Volusia county and watched it go to you know what. No pity here whatsoever and they do get houses coz one got mine. And they got a whole lot more as people left in fear. They drive 45,000 trucks and wads of money while they were buying baskets of meat with food stamps. They have 20 kids pouring out of a panal van and I can guarentee they weren't buckled up in seat belts. They've made departments stores their personal playground and for as many as I saw you can forget the need for them. Most were unemployed, dealing drugs and guns. Ya Florida is as corrupt as can be and I know there's tons of people who need and want to work. "Bi-lingual necessary".