Latinos worry as crackdown on immigration intensifies
Latinos worry as crackdown on immigration intensifies
By PATRICK McGEE
Star-Telegram staff writer
Dec. 14, 2007
STAR-TELEGRAM
Graph: Deportation fears The threat of deportation has emerged as a huge fear in Latino communities with the federal government's sharp increase in immigration law enforcement, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released Thursday.
"Latinos are feeling vulnerable in the current political and policy context," said Paul Taylor, acting director of the Washington, D.C.-based center.
The study found that just over half of Hispanics surveyed said they worry that they, a family member or a close friend will be deported.
Even a third of U.S.-born Hispanics expressed this fear in the survey of 2,003 people. The survey included foreign-born respondents but did not ask whether they were here legally. More people are being deported each year, with 300,500 people being shipped out of the country in fiscal 2007, according to the report. In fiscal 2002, 162,865 people were deported.
Last week, the Dallas office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced about 1,600 arrests of criminal and fugitive aliens in fiscal year 2007 -- a 270 percent increase from fiscal year 2006. Fugitive aliens are immigrants who have ignored deportation orders and stayed in the U.S.
Alberto Govea, president of a chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Fort Worth, said he has seen this fear of deportation among Hispanics he knows.
He said some illegal immigrants have developed emergency plans for who their children will stay with if they get deported.
"It's a real issue and a real concern," Govea said. "I don't think I could live with that kind of anxiety. It would be hard."
Hispanics are America's largest minority group, and 1 out of 4 Hispanic adults is an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
The survey also found a wide gap between Hispanics' and non-Hispanics' views on enforcement.
"In all cases, Latinos opposed all of these measures whereas non-Hispanics were much more supportive of all of these measures," Taylor said.
Nearly half of all non-Hispanics approved of workplace raids, while only 20 percent of Hispanics approved.
Eighty-five percent of non-Hispanics approved of verifying people's immigration or citizenship status before issuing them driver's licenses. Only 40 percent of Hispanics approved of demanding such documentation.
Nearly half of non-Hispanics disapproved of local police enforcing immigration laws, but 79 percent of Hispanics disapproved of such action.
Joel Downs, president of the Fort Worth chapter of Citizens for Immigration Reform, a group opposed to illegal immigration, said he does not believe so many Hispanics are opposed to stepped-up immigration enforcement.
"The ones that I have talked to that entered legally are nearly as resentful, and sometimes even more than the people who were born here, because they took the time to go through the line and obey the system," he said.
Online: www.pewhispanic.org
pmcgee@star-telegram.com
PATRICK McGEE, 817-685-3806
