Immigration becomes key for Iowa voters
Dan Nowicki
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 1, 2008 12:00 AM

OTTUMWA, Iowa - Iowa is roughly 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, and less than 5 percent of its population is immigrants.

But illegal immigration is a burning issue in this largely White, Midwestern state, and it's dominating the Republican presidential race here.

On Thursday, Iowa will decide in its caucuses whether to reward the candidates who have vowed to crack down on border crossers. If it does, the debate could get even hotter in the general election.

Several GOP contenders, among them Mitt Romney, have shifted to harder-line positions on immigration, and the topic almost always comes up in candidate stump speeches and town-hall meetings.

On Saturday in Ottumwa, for example, the former Massachusetts governor said, "Legal immigration is a great thing and a source of vitality and strength for America, but illegal immigration - that, we have got to stop. And I will go to work to do that very thing."

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., warned on Saturday in Newton that continued lax border enforcement could imperil U.S. sovereignty and safety.

The anti-immigration rhetoric disturbs some Iowa observers.

"What I think is happening is some of these politicians are vilifying these folks because they know that they're relatively powerless to say anything on their own behalf," said Mark Grey, director of the University of Northern Iowa's Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration in Cedar Falls.


Affected by immigration


A closer look finds that Iowa is not as unlikely a battleground on immigration as it first appears.

Although the population of immigrants is small, the numbers have swelled by 59 percent since 2000, to 149,000, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies.Residents complain that the state's meatpacking plants attract undocumented workers. On Dec. 16, 2006, federal immigration authorities made national news when they raided a Swift & Co. facility in Marshalltown and made sweeping arrests.

Ottumwa, a town of about 25,000 people in southeastern Iowa, embodies the tensions.

The recent influx of Mexican and Central American immigrants here and in other towns has sparked a cultural clash that unsettles many longtime Iowans.

Ottumwa was 95 percent White and just 2.8 percent Hispanic in the 2000 U.S. census.

"My husband is a druggist, and we had a Spanish-speaking girl who came to work for us because they (immigrants) would come in and ask for medicine and we couldn't understand," said Kay Carlson, an Ottumwa Republican and retired teacher who attended Romney's campaign appearance.

Keith Caviness, Romney's Wapello County chairman, predicted that any candidate who doesn't take a strong position against illegal immigration will face difficulty in the Midwest. He complained that an Ottumwa meat-processing plant advertises for workers on a billboard in Los Angeles, which immigration experts say is not uncommon because of a rural Iowa labor shortage and high job turnover.

"I have a problem with importing people into our community who shouldn't be in our United States to start with, legally, and then giving them work and allowing them to roam around in our community doing things that may or may not be acceptable to our community," Caviness said.


Immigration hurt McCain


Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., experienced the anti-illegal-immigration blowback firsthand.

His support of a comprehensive immigration-reform bill last year seriously damaged his presidential candidacy. McCain's proposed to toughen the border but included a temporary-worker program and a pathway to legalization for some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. The Senate dropped the legislation after public outcry that it amounted to amnesty.

"It's hurt me all over America," McCain said Thursday after a campaign stop near Des Moines.

McCain continues to dispute the amnesty charge, pointing out that it included fines. But he has adjusted his message, now saying that he "learned the lesson" and "got the message" and promising to tighten the border before pursuing other reforms.

"But then, my friends, we still need a temporary-worker program that works, we still need to address the 12 million people, and we thought we had a good outline and blueprint for that," McCain said at the Thursday event. "But people want the border secured first."

Jon Huggins is a Republican voter who under other circumstances might have gravitated to McCain's camp but is turned off by his immigration stance.

"I think he's an extremely sincere, dedicated person with a lot of integrity, but this amnesty thing is just very troubling," said Huggins, who retires Wednesday as the Colfax police chief.

The immigration discussion isn't limited to the Republican campaign in Iowa.

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., won applause Sunday after stressing that he opposes "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and believes new citizens "ought to learn to speak English."


Fear a factor?


Iowa immigration experts say conservative activists have overblown the issue and suggest that the language barrier is the biggest source of friction between newcomers and long-standing residents.

"Just fear and the inability to communicate cause a lot of frustrations," said Dan Holub, director of the University of Iowa's Labor Center in Iowa City. "The workers and unions that are dealing with immigration are not nearly as worked up about it as folks who are not affected by it."

Miryam Antúnez de Mayolo, a Cedar Falls immigration lawyer, said she noticed Iowan attitudes toward immigrants hardening a couple of years ago.

A perception emerged that Spanish-speaking immigrants are criminals or "morally bankrupt" and that the 2006 Marshalltown raid worsened that sentiment, she said.

"I've always considered Iowans good-hearted and welcoming, but I'm very sad to say that that has changed," Antúnez de Mayolo said. "It was very easy for Iowans to present this face of being welcoming to immigrants when there were no immigrants or very little immigrants."

Huggins, the outgoing Colfax police chief, rejected the notion that illegal-immigration critics have racial or ethnic motivations. He pointed to rising public costs associated with the education, hospitalization and incarceration of illegal immigrants.

"I have nothing against any race," he said. "They're criminals the minute they set foot on our land."

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