One Arizona town's take on immigration debate

Updated 3m ago
By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

APACHE JUNCTION, Ariz. — Far from the heated protest marches in downtown Phoenix, either denouncing Arizona's immigration law or embracing it, the arguments over the law aren't so simple.

Vince Cherryholmes, 51, a video store owner, says he was angered when U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton last month temporarily blocked the core of the law, known as S.B. 1070, which would have required police officers to determine the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there was a "reasonable suspicion" they were in the country illegally. Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has appealed the ruling.


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Cherryholmes, a 35-year-resident of Apache Junction, says he was further angered when he saw protest marches that called for repeal of the law.

"We got people down here waving the Mexican flag in America?" he says. "They should all be thrown in jail."

Rich Favia supports the law, too, because he sees it as a mechanism to identify and deport members of dangerous drug gangs — but he doesn't want to see illegal immigrants who are working hard and staying out of trouble removed from the country.

"They're just trying to make a living for their family like we are," says Favia, 64, who has been disabled since a hand grenade injured his spine during the Vietnam War. "I back them 100%. I know a lot of them."

Support for the law is widespread in Apache Junction, a working-class city of 32,000 east of Phoenix in the shadows of the Superstition Mountains. About 8% of the population is Hispanic, compared with 42% in Phoenix, according to the U.S. Census.

Even here, though, people disagree over the impact of illegal immigration on their state, who should be sent home and why the immigration measure ever became law.

Cherryholmes and others argue that illegal immigration is lowering wages for American workers and changing the face of their communities. He says nearby Mesa used to be a model city studied by city planners around the country.

"Now, it's little Mexico," he says dismissively.

Despite the increased number of Hispanics in the area, Art Bernal doesn't think illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from his neighbors. The retired Motorola engineer says he used to pick cantaloupes as a teen, work that immigrants do now.

"You think my kids will go pick cantaloupes?" he asks. "Please."

Maggie Eastling disagrees. She says she knows unemployed people in Apache Junction who would jump at the chance for any job.

"I can name a dozen right now that would pick whatever for a paycheck," says Eastling, 46, who owns a store with her husband.

Still, Eastling worries that illegal immigrants will be harassed by overzealous anti-immigrant groups unhappy with Bolton's decision.

"I'm really worried that people are going down to the border to take care of things themselves," she says.

At the Plaza Barbershop on the outskirts of the city, barber Russell McClurg says legislators were right to pass the law. He says supporters of the law are being falsely labeled as racists when they're really concerned only with keeping terrorists out of their state.

"They make it seem like we're just picking on the poor Mexicans, who just want to work in the lettuce fields," says McClurg, 70. "We're not down on Mexicans. We're down on an open border and someone bombing a city or bringing in germ warfare."

Two chairs over, barber Jim Metcalf disagrees, arguing that criminal activity and the economy in Arizona hadn't changed much in recent years.

"I think it's a political thing. They're all grabbing for votes," says Metcalf, 60.

Bernal, who says he's a 10th-generation Arizonan, says a shift in the state's makeup led to the law.

Arizona natives have always gotten along with Mexican immigrants, appreciated their culture and worked with them, Bernal says, but waves of people moving in from northern states in recent decades were unfamiliar with Hispanics and pushed for the law and similar anti-immigration measures.

"They don't understand the dynamics involved because they're from somewhere else," says Bernal, 62. "This isn't back home."

The debate is difficult for Eastling.

She says she understands the hopes and dreams of immigrants; her four grandparents came from Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Germany and all went through immigration processing at Ellis Island. She resents the fact that so many now are able to get around the immigration system.

Her grandparents, "didn't have it easy. They had to work their (butts) off," she says. "But they didn't sneak in the back door."
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