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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    'Pencil capital' writes a dramatic Hispanic chapter

    http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0f228286-1b3d- ... 511c8.html

    'Pencil capital' writes a dramatic Hispanic chapter
    A town in Tennessee is experiencing a wave of immigration by those seeking work in its factories and farms

    By Henry Hamman
    The Financial Times, September 2, 2005

    Honoria Sanchez, a native of Veracruz, Mexico, has never been to a Tennessee walking horse show, never listens to country music and has never heard of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey.

    None of this would be surprising except that for six years Ms Sanchez has lived and worked in Shelbyville, the centre of Tennessee's horse country, an hour's drive from Nashville, the capital of country music, and about a half-hour from Lynchburg, the home of the Jack Daniel's distillery.

    Ms Sanchez is an illegal immigrant who works in a manufacturing plant. She is the new face of immigration in the American mid-south, part of a little-noted wave of Hispanic migration into cities and rural communities where, previously, black-white relations have dominated social, economic and political life.

    The change has been dramatic. North Carolina's Hispanic population increased by 394 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Arkansas (337 per cent), Georgia (300 per cent), and Tennessee (278 per cent) rounded out the top ranks for Hispanic population increases, according to a Pew Research Center study. According to US Census Bureau data, the four states added 379,000 Hispanic residents by July 2004.

    In Shelbyville, the picture-perfect county seat of Bedford County, Tennessee, with a white-columned red brick courthouse perched atop a hill, the demographic implications are just beginning to sink in.

    Census Bureau data show that between 2000 and 2004, Bedford County's Hispanic population grew 61 per cent, to 4,550, out of a total population of just over 40,000. As recently as 1990, the census recorded only 246 Hispanics in the county.

    Officials such as Betty Lamb, the City Recorder, say the new arrivals have so far had a limited economic effect on the town.

    Many are employed on the production line at a poultry processing plant - the county's biggest single employer - or at the pencil and pen factories that allow Shelbyville to claim the title of 'pencil capital of the world', while others are labourers on the horse farms that make the area so picturesque. 'I think they're jobs that other folks won't do,' says Mrs Lamb. 'There's no denying that jobs down there (at the poultry plant) are nasty jobs.'

    While there is little visible tension between the new arrivals and long-time residents, providers of social and health services say the Hispanic influx is causing stress, in part because of the lack of personnel who can communicate with the new residents.

    'I do not have a problem with them coming over here,' says Mrs Lamb. But, she adds: 'It would make it so much easier if, when they do immigrate here, they would learn our language, learn our ways, and abide by our laws.'

    The rapid growth of pockets of Hispanic settlement has 'been a real cultural shock for people in this area', says Belinda Riddle, who has helped set up language training for healthcare workers.

    The stream of Mexican immigrants shows no sign of abating. Ms Sanchez, who was a seamstress in Veracruz, says she came to Shelbyville because she had heard from friends who had already made the trek. Four years ago she gave birth to a son and two years ago she was able to save enough to bring her daughter, Gaby, to Shelbyville.

    The implications of the Hispanic influx for small rural areas are 'mind boggling', according to Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington DC think-tank.

    He cites data showing that in 2002 one out of four births in the US was to an immigrant mother, the highest level in the nation's history.

    In Tennessee in 2000, 42 per cent of immigrant mothers lacked a high-school education. Their children, Dr Camarota says, will be born into poverty and will need state assistance.

    Dr Camarota argues that as new immigrants start families the effect in some locales will be 'a dramatic increase in the size of the low-income population', an outcome that may be 'good for business, but not so good for taxpayers'.

    'There's a high cost to cheap labour,' he argues.

    For Ms Sanchez, those issues are not important. She says she finds it easier to work in the US than Mexico, but she is wounded by the humiliations that come her way from local people who express irritation at her lack of English.

    Despite her plans to stay in Shelbyville, she says she does not feel at home. 'I'm very aware that I'm here to work,' she says through an interpreter. 'It's kind of like I'm being borrowed.'
    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at http://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member Richard's Avatar
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    Places like Shelbyville Tennessee are about to experience a flood of displaced American citizens and legit immigrants from the Katrina Disaster area. Having the presence of people like Honoria Sanchez creates a problem for the people of the U.S. If she is a Mexican illegal working in a U.S. manufacturing plant then she is probably here on forged papers. Her feeling of being on borrowed time is prescient.
    I support enforcement and see its lack as bad for the 3rd World as well. Remittances are now mostly spent on consumption not production assets. Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  3. #3
    Senior Member MopheadBlue's Avatar
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    For Ms Sanchez, those issues are not important. She says she finds it easier to work in the US than Mexico, but she is wounded by the humiliations that come her way from local people who express irritation at her lack of English.

    Despite her plans to stay in Shelbyville, she says she does not feel at home. 'I'm very aware that I'm here to work,' she says through an interpreter. 'It's kind of like I'm being borrowed.'
    Of course local people express irritation at your lack of English. You burst into their town uninvited and upset their traditional way of living. You'd find that same irritation in any community across the state. You're not being singled out .. waaaaaah .. so quit the whining and if you must whine and complain the easy solution is to go back to Mexico - you are not needed and you're certainly not wanted here.

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