Thread: New Bedford: Raid bares deep divide

Raid bares deep divide
In New Bedford, hard lines over illegal immigration
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | April 15, 2007

NEW BEDFORD -- To Cindy Tapper and her friends, gathered on black-upholstered banquettes at Shawmut Diner on a recent morning, the cause of New Bedford's economic woes was laid bare by a March 6 raid on a waterfront leather-goods factory and the arrest of 361 suspected illegal immigrants.

"I have a nephew who works at one of the fish plants," said Tapper, 56, a homemaker who grew up in the developments across the street from the diner.

"Nobody showed up for work for a week after that ICE raid," she said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "ICE needs to come to New Bedford and set up shop. The illegal immigrants are using the hospitals as a doctor's office. They're putting a strain on the city of New Bedford."

If you want to know where the illegal immigrants are working, said Tapper's friend David Gould, 47, "look for the bicycles. They're lined up outside all the fish houses."

"There are plenty of empty mills in New Bedford we can make into deportation centers very quickly," said Lynn Kelly, a graphic artist, 40. "That's the business to get into."

For years, illegal immigrants and native-born residents have been living side by side in this city of 94,000. Tensions flared occasionally, but mostly the communities coexisted without incident. But when federal immigration officials threw open the doors to the Michael Bianco plant, they also brought resentments into the open that had been long simmering in this struggling city.

"What this raid did, it forced us to look at the issue of illegal immigration in New Bedford for what it is," said Phil Paleologos, co-owner of Shawmut Diner. "The jobs taken, the services being utilized, the schools and the social services. . . . This raid has pinpointed exactly what the problems are and what needs to be done: Enforcement is the best way."

The raid brought the city's mostly underground illegal immigrant population into sharp relief, making them feel vulnerable and less welcomed. It hardened attitudes toward those immigrants in diners and on the streets. It galvanized immigrants and their advocates, who are now more determined to band together and fight for rights.

And the possible shuttering of the factory, one of the city's largest employers, has prompted a citywide discussion on what's ailing New Bedford.

The old whaling city has struggled for decades, since the textile mills that employed tens of thousands of residents disappeared, as manufacturers moved to southern states and other countries where labor is cheap.

Bianco owner Francesco Insolia, who opened the factory in the mid-1980s and built the workforce to 600 after winning military contracts worth $232 million, was considering a move to South Carolina. But in 2004, New Bedford and state development officials persuaded him to stay, offering tax breaks and job training grants.

The plant has been one of the few engines of growth in a sputtering city. Unemployment is a stubborn problem, hovering around 10 percent -- twice the state average. Education levels also trail the rest of the state, with 42 percent of the population lacking a high school diploma, according to an analysis by the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Seventeen percent of the city's families live below the poverty level.

Longtime residents remember far better times. When Eddie L. Johnson arrived from Georgia in 1974, the city was "popular, glamorous. A Cape Cod kind of heaven, with a lot of employment, and places to go at night," said Johnson, who took a break from his job as a dispatcher with a local trash company to visit his friends at Shawmut Diner.

"And the women were gorgeous," he added, winking.

The women are still gorgeous, said Johnson, 61, but everything else has gone to seed.

"The problem right now is this flawed immigration policy," said Johnson. "I'm not anti human, I'm just pro-American. And Americans deserve to work in a locale they're familiar with. Here you have job-training money . . . going to illegal immigrants. It's devastating to the economy, period."

But local academics say the picture is far more complicated. New Bedford's immigrants are a small factor in the city's troubles, said Mark Santow, assistant professor of American History at UMass-Dartmouth.

"New Bedford is in many ways a broken community," he said. "The decline in living wage jobs in the past 50 years is similar to other places in the state, like Lowell and Holyoke. The middle class leaves and goes to the suburbs. Industry leaves the state and the country. The city doesn't have a big enough tax base to maintain good schools and keep the city safe and the infrastructure in good condition."

Still, what happened at Michael Bianco hit a particularly sensitive nerve. The managers turned away legal job applicants in favor of illegal immigrants because the undocumented workers were more likely to put up with the low wages and extremely restrictive working conditions, prosecutors say. More than half of the 600 workers were unable to prove they were in the country legally when federal agents swooped in.

"The argument has gone on forever that illegals are taking jobs that Americans won't take," said Ken Pittman, a talk radio host on local station WBSM-AM. "Well, a quarter of a billion dollars [in military contracts] came to New Bedford, and the place is loaded with talented seamstresses, legal immigrants, and born Americans, and people are angry that Americans were not made aware of this gainful employment."

Pittman's views have "lost him a few friends down here," he said. But his radio show thrives, and many callers echo his sentiments.

"The more I hear about these immigrants, the more fired up I get," said one woman who called in March 19. "Let's just say they were arrested for peddling drugs. . . . Well it's the same thing. It's illegal, illegal, illegal!"

Twenty percent of New Bedford's population is foreign-born, but there are no reliable statistics on how many are here illegally. The illegal immigrants, who cluster in three-deckers in the South End, come mainly from Central America and Brazil. While some ministers and others have reached out to them after the raid, many feel a new wariness and heightened hostility.

"The sides have hardened," said Corinn Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center in New Bedford. "But it seems to be around finding a convenient scapegoat."

Santiago, a 22-year-old factory worker who would not give his last name because he is in the United States illegally from Guatemala, said the city's immigrants feel less free.

"There's been a big change because now people don't even want to go out," said Santiago, whose pregnant wife was arrested in the raid. "Before, you could go wherever you wanted to go, but since this [raid], it's been very difficult. You don't see as many people shopping in the stores."

Juan, 25, an illegal immigrant laborer from El Salvador who also refused to give his name , said a group of men stared coldly at him and his friends when they visited a discotheque three weeks after the raid.

"I felt really uncomfortable," he said in Spanish at a Caribbean restaurant in New Bedford. "They didn't say anything to us. But sometimes you don't need for them to say anything."

Others have noticed a drop in traffic at restaurants, shops, and barber shops that cater to immigrants.

Luis Fernández, 47, a door-to-door perfume salesman, said fewer people now open the door when he knocks. Sometimes, he said, he can hear them run and hide.

"Since the raid the clients aren't the same," said Fernández, a legal resident from Cuba, as he waited in a chair at Rodriguez Barber Shop.

The issue is difficult for Mayor Scott W. Lang of New Bedford. While he believes the raid was inhumane, he says jobs in New Bedford should go to legal residents. He is angry that the city is "being used as a pawn to wake people up to the fact that we need immigration reform."

It will be a long time before the community relaxes again, both sides say.

"People haven't stopped talking about this," said Johnson . "It has been on the front burner longer than any other issue in the past 30 years. . . . Till they figure this city's problems out, we're going to be walking backwards into the 21st century."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... ep_divide/

"The argument has gone on forever that illegals are taking jobs that Americans won't take," said Ken Pittman, a talk radio host on local station WBSM-AM."

Lets get W on that show