Thread: IA: Immigration transforms heartland town

Immigration transforms heartland town
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
June 15, 2007

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — A cacophony of Spanish voices echoes off the walls, competing with the 15-piece brass band on stage at a dance hall on the edge of town.

Small children rule the floor, bouncing around like pinballs while their parents sit at tables, conversing and celebrating over beans and rice and Budweiser beer.

Suddenly, heads turn as the guest of honor emerges from the edge of the crowd. She's an image of nervous elegance in white satin and lace, flanked by thin young men in white ties and tails.

Slowly, Norma Garcia takes her rightful place at the center of attention. Several hundred eyes turn upon her, and many voices go quiet.

This is her quinceañera, the 15th birthday fiesta pushing her toward womanhood. All her family, friends and neighbors are here to celebrate, just like they would back in Mexico.

For this night at least, political matters seem a world away. But in a sense, this festive scene has everything to do with the 2008 race for the White House.

The padrinos all have chipped in to make this event more spectacular than the typical middle American wedding. There's a tower of white cakes connected by little bridges. There's a mountain of gifts. There's fancy crystal. Balloons are everywhere. And a lineup of musical acts warms up in the parking lot outside.

The crowd, mostly laborers, is elbow-to-elbow, including lots of people who work with Norma's parents at the Swift & Co. meat packing plant here.

Norma's dad, Angel Garcia, could not look more proud. He's in a brand new tan suit that still has the designer's label stitched on the left sleeve. At the Catholic church ceremony earlier, he was saying how much he likes Marshalltown, this place in the middle of the state, in the middle of America.

"It's just like Mexico," he said in Spanish.

There are about 500 people inside the fiesta ballroom, and most of them are Mexican immigrants. Back in 1990, just two years before Norma was born, the entire Hispanic population of Marshalltown, Iowa, wouldn't have made a crowd half this size.

As the event photographer clicks away, he's taking snapshots of a heartland community in transition. And that's something all of the 2008 presidential contenders are finding as they make their ways to Iowa to compete in the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

Immigration is changing the face of once-homogeneous communities like this, bringing a sudden dose of diversity and the culture clashes that come with it.

Marshalltown, which hosted four presidential candidates in one ten-day period in April, is considered the epicenter of the state's demographic shift.

During the 1990s, there was a more than ten-fold increase in Marshalltown's Hispanic population. Folks mostly from the states of Michoachán and Guanajuato, Mexico, were drawn by higher-paying jobs at the meat packing plant and the promise of a safe, small-town environment where they could raise their families.

Over the decade, the city's Hispanic population went from 248 to 3,265, helping to make up for a slow, generation-long decline in the city's white population. By the year 2000, Marshalltown had 26,009 residents and almost exactly the same proportion of Hispanic residents as the rest of the United States, 12.6 percent.

Some old-time Iowa residents say immigration is bringing new life to small towns that otherwise would have withered away. But it's also building a political backlash among those who fear crime or poverty, or resent having the face and language of their communities change.

On the presidential campaign trail, there are other big issues that get attention, like the war, health care, energy and the economy. But when a candidate pays a visit to virtually any corner of Iowa these days, the easiest thing to predict is that there will be one or more questions about illegal immigration.

When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made a breakfast stop just south of Marshalltown in Newton, Iowa, this month, seven of the ten questions were about immigration.

It's no wonder, considering McCain was still smarting from that week's defeat of an immigration reform bill he had tried to shepherd through the U.S. Senate. After the meet-and-greet session, he told reporters the landscape just isn't the same as when he first campaigned in Iowa in 1999 and 2000.

"No, this is a burning issue," McCain said. "Every town hall meeting I (hear) this kind of concern, deep concern. But there's also a desire to see us do something ... 'Why won't you fix it?' That's why they send us to Washington, to fix things."

The issue is red hot, but there's hardly a unanimous opinion from average Iowans about exactly what should be done about it.

Some want a crackdown on all illegal immigrants. They want more enforcement actions like the raids at Marshalltown's Swift plant last December, when 89 workers were rounded up on the same day hundreds more were arrested in Colorado and four other states.

"I think they've known for years they've had a largely illegal workforce," says Jeff Heiden, 49, a local Realtor. "They knew they were doing it ... We don't blame the people. We blame the employers and the government."

But those raids, which came just days before Christmas on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, also produced an outpouring of sympathy for families torn apart by deportations.

"This is the humanity of it," says Sister Christine Feagan, pounding on a tall pile of papers representing all the immigrant families that came to St. Mary's Catholic Church looking for help after the raids rounded up the bread-winners.

Feagan says contributions poured in from all corners of Iowa.

"Most of these people sent a check saying, 'This should not happen in this country,'" Feagan says. "Lots called and said, 'If there are any kids, we'll take care of them.'"

Last year's raids galvanized Iowans on both sides of the illegal immigration debate. Now, when candidates hold their town hall meetings, they might get asked if they support tough enforcement. Or they might get asked whether they support a plan to legalize undocumented workers.

Either way, there's no avoiding the questions.

At a construction company's offices on the east side of Marshalltown, local businessman Leon Townsend, 55, complains about competing companies he suspects of hiring lower-paid, illegal immigrant workers.

Some local firms couldn't compete and were forced out of business, he says.

"I'm still here because enough people in this community want to hire somebody who's going to be around a lot longer," Townsend says.

Townsend has volunteered to campaign for Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., figuring he won't win but will force the other presidential contenders to promise tougher enforcement.

His friend, retired high school teacher Jinita Boyd, has a long litany of issues with the way the community is changing, but she says critics are being silenced for fear of being labeled racists.

She's upset that local taxpayers have to build new schools. "It's not because our population's growing," she says. "It's because the Hispanic population is growing."

She's worried about higher poverty rates and increased crime. In 1998, at the peak of the immigrant wave, U.S. News & World Report profiled Marshalltown as a hub for Mexican drug smugglers.

"When Hispanics first arrived, everyone tried so hard not to be prejudiced and (to be) so welcoming, and I think some of the leaders went too far," Boyd says. "We're at a point now where we feel this is being pushed on us."

And it's having an effect on local families, too, Boyd says. "We see unattractive, poor white girls hooking up with a guy from Mexico so he can stay here," she says.

Some folks are still upset about a Hispanic heritage festival that was scheduled on the 4th of July. And language is a hot-button issue. It prompted Marshall County to pass an ordinance requiring all government communication to take place in English only.

Heiden, the Realtor, says some white families are leaving town.

"We have all these people coming in that tend to be poor and uneducated," he says. "Why isn't the Mexican government doing its job? Their government is responsible for their citizens. Our government is responsible for our citizens."

Since Marshalltown has had more than a decade to adjust to its shifting demographics, the backlash is starting to subside, said Ken Anderson, president of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce.

About 10 years ago, businesses that added Spanish-language signs to try to boost their customer bases sometimes faced a backlash from irate, longtime customers.

"Today you wouldn't see that," Anderson says. "We're maturing through this process. That does not mean everybody likes it in Marshalltown, Iowa."

Back in the 1990s, it was common for white residents to call the police asking, "What are you going to do about the Mexican problem?" said longtime Police Chief Lon Walker.

"We'd ask, 'What's the problem?'" Walker said. "They'd say, 'Someone moved in next to me and they're Mexican."

Those types of clashes appear to be declining, but that doesn't mean the Hispanic and longtime Marshalltown cultures are fully integrated.

The Chamber of Commerce is actively trying to recruit new members from immigrant-owned businesses. "We're really trying to build one community," Anderson says, lamenting that the campaign hasn't been as successful as he'd like — not yet.

In some ways, Marshalltown really is two communities now: Old-timers and recien llegados, new arrivals. On Memorial Day, for example, when fallen soldiers and local military veterans were remembered at three somber community ceremonies, there were virtually no Hispanic faces in the crowds.

The debate taking place in the U.S. Congress, combined with last year's Swift raids, have elevated voices on both ends of the illegal immigration debate. Anderson sees the Chamber of Commerce in the middle, trying to keep the peace.

"We know because the immigration system isn't working well and because the federal government hasn't done its job in the first place that we have undocumented workers in our midst," he says. "As a community, we don't have much jurisdiction to determine who is and who isn't documented. So we're faced with a choice. Do we isolate our Hispanic population as we're waiting for the federal government to take action? Or do we try to put in place those things that create one community like we're talking about?"

A new conflict over immigration is brewing over at Marshalltown's City Hall.

Back in 1998, Chief Walker testified at a congressional hearing, pleading with members to help local governments deal with illegal immigration. Now, he has won preliminary approval from the City Council to apply for a federal program that gives local law enforcement more training and tools to determine whether people held in connection with crimes are illegal immigrants and should be deported.

"It allows us to be more efficient in what we're already doing," Walker says.

Despite Walker's assurances, immigrant rights advocates worry it will be abused to harass Hispanics, whether they're illegal immigrants or not. And some fear it will force undocumented immigrants even deeper underground.

If the local-federal agreement is finalized, "People say, 'I'll move out of Marshalltown. I'd be scared to drive to my work,'" said Guillermo Hernandez, 40, an organizer for the group Latinos en Accion.

After the Swift raids, "(Some immigrants) were afraid to go out of their homes. The town was dead," said Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who was once illegal but now has legal permanent residency status. "I think there needs to be some sort of solution that works, that's not splitting up familes ... Kids are still afraid that parents will disappear after going to work."

So the presidential candidates face pressure from both sides of the divide over illegal immigration. If there's one thing both sides agree on, it's that they want the politicians to stop talking and finally do something.

Meanwhile, life goes on in one of the communities in transition.

One recent Sunday in a jam-packed basketball gym, Marshalltown High School's newfound diversity could be seen in the long line of graduates and the faces of proud parents in the crowd.

Today, there are only two colors here. Red gowns for the girls. Blue ones for the boys. Still, before the ceremony many teenagers segregate themselves into little cliques — English-speaking over here, and Spanish-speaking over there.

"We're very much a diverse school," principal Bonnie Lowry says. "Our cultures don't necessarily mix, but they co-exist."

As with Norma Garcia's quinceañera, celebration is something the two cultures prefer to do separately.

For the class of 2007, "The best thing was we spent good times with our friends during senior year," says 18-year-old Mario Guevara. "The bad thing was, the soccer team didn't make it to state."

Born in Michoachan, Mexico, he has lived in the United States just eight years. He's one of the new immigrants who came of age just as Marshalltown was changing.

Now, Guevara is getting ready to become the first in his family to go to college, where he plans to study business.

"Sometimes (people) say, 'Why don't you go back to Mexico and not come back,'" he says. But this is home now. "I'm really proud of Marshalltown and America, because here, me and my family have a better life."

sprengelmeyerm@shns.com

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 65,00.html

"Sometimes (people) say, 'Why don't you go back to Mexico and not come back,'" he says. But this is home now. "I'm really proud of Marshalltown and America, because here, me and my family have a better life."

I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy inside (NOT).

So, you speak ONLY English, right? And you embrace the American culture and have abandoned your old Mexican culture, right?

I doubt it.