Latinos flee Oklahoma; new law hits others, too
Sunday, September 7, 2008 1:34 AM
By Todd Jones

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH





Leticia, whose husband is undocumented, works in Tulsa as a nurse at a health service. The number of its Hispanic clients has declined.

TULSA, Okla. - Even those used to powerful gusts here in tornado alley weren't prepared for what happened when the rhetoric swirling around immigration touched down as law.

Some were swept up in unexpected consequences, hassled with more paperwork and longer lines to receive an identification card or bounced from state medical rolls.

Many others were blown out of town, even out of state.

Estimates indicate that up to 25,000 Latinos have fled Tulsa County, and an unknown number have left the state since Democratic Gov. Brad Henry signed one of the nation's toughest immigration laws in May 2007. (Mississippi enacted a similar law in July.)

"That was the purpose," said state Rep. Randy Terrill, a Republican from Moore, Okla., who wrote the law that took effect Nov. 1. "It's attrition through an enforcement approach to solving illegal immigration."

Latino advocates, however, describe a subsequent climate of fear and racism that's as palpable as the relentless wind that sweeps across this heartland state.

"You don't have to be undocumented to feel as if you're targeted by this law," said the Rev. Julian Rodriguez, a U.S. citizen who moved from Mexico in 1983.

The fallout - intended and unintended - gives Ohio lawmakers much to consider as they decide whether to follow Oklahoma's lead.

The law makes it a felony to transport, conceal, harbor or shelter illegal immigrants.

Strict enforcement of identification and paperwork requirements has caused headaches for all citizens. No one predicted longer lines and delays for everyone receiving or renewing a driver's license.

No one anticipated that nearly 6,000 people - mostly nonimmigrants - would be dropped from SoonerCare, the state Medicaid program. Of those removed in December, 58 percent were white and 62 percent were children. They failed to provide all of the required new paperwork to prove legal residence.

Few foresaw that immigrants would become easier targets for criminals, who know they'll be reluctant to contact authorities for fear of deportation.

Despite such unintended consequences, Oklahoma's anti-immigration crackdown has been wildly popular in polls since the legislation sailed through the state's Republican-dominated legislature.

"It's working great, bud; it really is," said Dan Howard, founder of Outraged Patriots, an Oklahoma-based Web site focusing on immigration.

Business organizations, however, have joined a legal challenge to the law filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. An Oklahoma federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of job-related parts of the new law that was scheduled to take effect this summer, and said it is "substantially likely" the law is unconstitutional.

The law's other provisions remain in effect.

Enforcement varies from community to community. Most agree that Tulsa has become the epicenter of the crackdown in a state where immigrants have accounted for nearly 30 percent of the population growth in the past eight years.

Oklahoma's Latino population has jumped nearly 45 percent since 2000 and is now about 7 percent of the 3.6 million residents. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2006 that 75,000 were living illegally in the state.

For many Latinos living in Oklahoma - legally or illegally - the law has caused pain.

"We've lost the sense of belonging," said Sebastian Lantos, a Tulsa Democrat seeking to become the first Hispanic elected to the state legislature.

If anything, Oklahoma's controversial law has reinforced the walls between its critics and proponents.

"Other than the threat of terrorism, illegal immigration may be the biggest threat facing this nation," Terrill said. "The future of the republic may depend on it."

The gray-haired grandmother was set to call her meeting to order but first wanted to make something known about her nonpartisan lobbyist group: Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now.

"We don't get into abortion and gays and all that," Carol Helm said. "It's just the illegal alien invasion and the cost of that issue."

She had photocopied articles, papers from Terrill and memorized statistics at her disposal, including an estimate by the Federation for American Immigration Reform that Oklahoma spends about $207 million a year in public funds for illegal immigrants.

The nonprofit immigration reform group based in Washington, D.C., came up with its figure by applying studies of nine other states to its estimate of 83,000 illegal immigrants in Oklahoma.

The state does not have its own estimated total cost of services for illegal immigrants.

"It's about the money, money, money, money, money," said Helm, 65, who created the reform group five years ago after "an invader" killed a cow belonging to her relatives. "We citizens can't continue to have our taxes raised to subsidize them."

No opposing views were heard in the next 90 minutes at the Tulsa City-County Library as the group held its monthly meeting in April. All 17 attendees were white senior citizens, most in blue jeans, brought together in a small, windowless room.

"We have chaos," said Bill Kohl, 81, of Tulsa.

The seniors spoke of disaster, travesty, threats and a derelict federal government.

"We haven't talked about national security, letting all those unknowns come in," said Charlene Fholer, 71, of Tulsa.

A woman said that immigrants are "having children, children and children. We Caucasians are not. Pretty soon, they're going to outnumber us. That's what they're working on."

The group vented about immigrants not wanting to assimilate and how they're eroding the city's culture.

"When you tolerate lawlessness, then that breeds more lawlessness," said Richard "'Top" Winters, 80. "It's accepted in Mexico and other places."

The Tulsa resident stood up and declared that Oklahoma "must keep these jackasses from having driver's licenses."

By meeting's end, with emotions surging, members were talking over one another.

The Rev. Rodriguez's flock of worshipers, about 20 on this weekday evening, knelt in prayer inside a cement church near a Tulsa International Airport runway.

The pastor of Iglesia Eficaz, an Assembly of God church, stood outside and sighed as the sun set. "This particular law is an attack on unity," he said. "It's easy to scapegoat Hispanics and say this is the reason why we have problems."

Extreme voices of dissent shout about "ethnic cleansing" and "Gestapo tactics," but softer words scream louder about fear.

Pam Herrera, 24, refuses to make a turn in her car if a police officer is behind her.

"I just go straight so I don't have to use my signal," said the health clinic worker. "I feel like they're following me around, waiting for me to do something wrong."

And Herrera is a U.S. citizen.

Rey Saldierna, too, is a citizen, as are his wife and daughter, a Marine. The carpenter has lived in the country for 28 years, the past nine in Tulsa. He talked about selling his house and moving to Texas."My wife and I want to be somewhere where we feel welcomed," Saldierna said. "I can feel racism in some places here, and I didn't before."

Julio Reiguero knew he wasn't welcome because he sat in the Tulsa County jail. After living in Columbus for six months, the Mexican citizen returned to Tulsa in December for a construction job.

Arrested in March and charged with driving under the influence, he awaited deportation from a country he's lived in for nine years.

"We want to be here on good terms, but there's no way you can get your (documentation) papers," said Reiguero, one of 1,173 immigrants detained at the Tulsa County jail since the new law took effect. "If it wasn't so difficult, everybody would try to get their papers."

Across town, three families from Rodriguez's congregation fled Oklahoma when the immigration law passed. Others have gone underground. They used to squeeze in 200 people for a typical Sunday ceremony. Now, about 100 attend.

Rodriguez canceled the all-night Friday prayer meetings because he didn't want his congregation out past 10 p.m. for fear that some would be picked up by the police and deported.

He sold the church's van because he feared he'd be arrested for driving illegal immigrants.

He has five children of his own, but since the law passed, he has taken on power of attorney for another 50 children from his church, all citizens born to illegal immigrant parents.

Irony abounded one spring morning at the Oklahoma Capitol: A crew of Latino workers tended to flower beds on the lawn of the statehouse - a building with a Native American statue on top and law-making descendants of European immigrants inside.

And in that building, the Republican who hand-wrote the law targeting immigrants painted some as thugs and killers as he sat a few miles from where home-grown terrorist Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.

"How do you put a money figure on illegal aliens, not supposed to be here in the first place, when they rape, rob or murder one of our citizens?" said Terrill, who has been called "El Diablo" (the devil) by some Latino critics.

His passion poured forth in two hours, with taps on a wooden table for emphasis.

Terrill said he was "tickled pink" that his state is the "tip of the spear" for immigration reform. He's pleased that Ohio and other states are using the Oklahoma law as a model, even though he has been attacked with hate mail and threatening telephone calls to his home, his likeness has been the target of darts at a Latino fair, and his campaign signs have been defaced.

The new law "does not care what your skin color is or if you speak with an accent or what your last name is," Terrill said. "What it cares about is, 'Are you in the country legally?' I remind you, being a criminal is not a protected class."

A few weeks later, the Oklahoma legislature backed off Terrill's plans to strengthen the immigration law, the Senate unexpectedly defeated his bill declaring English as the state's official language, and a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against parts of the state law.

About 100 miles northeast of the opulent, dark-wooded Senate meeting room where Terrill had defended the law, a woman sat exhausted in a concrete-block office.

Social worker Margarita Summers, a U.S. citizen, wondered if any backlash against Oklahoma's immigration law would be too little, too late.

The grandmother, a Tulsa resident since coming from Mexico in 1983, bemoaned how the law has changed her city and state, and how she sees fear in the eyes of all Hispanics.

"I don't think it'll ever be normal again here," she said. "This law is like a cancer. It can be pacified in some ways, but it won't end. To me, it's a terminal illness."

Free-lance photographer Leonardo Carrizo served as interpreter for interviews with Spanish-speaking sources.


A contract crew of Hispanic landscapers tend to the flowers on the grounds of the Statehouse in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Leonardo Carrizo)
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