http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/20/usa

super-rich
The deportation of illegal workers is dividing Long Island, one of America's wealthiest regions.

Long Island, where rich residents are facing a labour shortage after a spate of deportations. Photograph: Kate Maxwell

It is high season in the Hamptons, the holiday home for America's superstars and merely super-rich. But behind the perfectly tended lawns and clipped hedgerows at the far end of Long Island all is not well.

Tiger Woods recently paid $65 million (£32m) for a beachfront home here. Christie Brinkley, whose recent divorce has been the talk of Long Island, is a regular visitor. But as a result of a locally enforced purge of the undocumented immigrants who provide much of the menial workforce, barmen are disappearing from beach bars, waiters from the lobster-and-champagne benefit parties and cleaners from the holiday mansions. Long Island is divided as never before between the haves and the have-nots.

'The Latino community are living in uncertainty and fear,' said Sister Margaret Smyth, the head of a church group in Riverhead, one of the poorest areas of Long Island. 'As a result of the crackdown, we've created a new underclass of women and children. Their men have been deported but they want to stay because they want their children educated. Before, people were poor; now they are extremely poor.'

Up to now summering bankers and celebrities have been more concerned with the social dramas of the season, such as the Brinkley divorce and an entertaining scuffle at an art opening in East Hampton, when white wine was served in contravention of a new teetotal town ordinance. But tensions as a result of the crackdown on cheap labour have spilled embarrassingly into view.

Hotels, restaurants and gardening contractors are predicting an imminent shortage of able workers. And every day in the car park of the 7-11 convenience shop on the main road in Southampton, a daily drama of the poor is played out in one of the most prosperous regions of America. More than a hundred Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan day labourers gather hoping to be picked up for work. Now opposing them are a group of protesters - Long Island's 'minutemen' - clutching 'No Amnesty' placards, shouting insults and clearly identifying who should be the next deportees.

'The protesters have a lot of support,' said Brian Smith, leaning outside his store, PH Pool. Reports that cross-border immigration may be slowing was not evident in the Hamptons, he said. 'If anything there are more immigrants coming than ever before; and I don't see why they should come here and have their healthcare and babies for free.'

The Latino labourers, who are estimated to make up 20 per cent of the Long Island workforce, believe the protesters are being paid to confront them, although they have no proof.

Police hover nearby, ready to swoop at the first sign of a disturbance that will give them the opportunity to ask for identification. If the requisite documents are not forthcoming, deportation proceedings may follow. 'There used to be work but now there are always problems,' said one worker, before being hustled away by two police deputies. 'We work hard. We don't cause problems. This is a country of immigrants ... so why do they want to turn against us?'

Luis Valenzuela, director of the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, said: 'The immigration raids have been quite devastating to a vulnerable community. Now they are introducing measures that will force people deeper in the shadows. When people go deeper in the shadows they become more vulnerable to exploitation.'

The problems of the Latino community are being reflected across the US. In May, nearly 400 mostly Guatemalan workers at a meatpacking plant in Ohio were arrested. Instead of being deported, many were convicted for offering false identification and sentenced to five or more months in prison. In a recent speech on illegal immigration, presidential candidate Barack Obama said: 'We need a practical solution for the problem of the 12 million people who are here without documentation.'

In the Hamptons, there is no such solution in the offing. The Southampton congressman Tim Bishop said: 'I don't think there is a broad understanding of the kind of havoc we are looking at,' he said.

The tension between native locals and the immigrant workers is unlikely to improve as the local economy deteriorates, in common with the rest of America. 'I call it mob mentality,' said Sister Margaret, whose caseload includes taking unscrupulous employers to court for employing Latino workers, often cheating them of their pay - and then reporting them for failure to pay taxes. 'I go after the employers and take them right into court. But people are afraid - they're afraid of people who look different even though they're not competing for the same type of work.'

As the cost of keeping the hedges trim and children cared for begins to spike upwards because of a shortage of immigrant labour, the Hamptons immigration debate is likely to become even more explosive. In East Hampton, there have already been a series of seminars on how better to integrate Latino workers into the community. But the burden of undocumented and often illiterate immigrant labourers still falls to charity groups and church outreach programmes which may now be stretched beyond their limited means.

According to community activist Ligia Soto, 'people are still arriving regardless of what they hear or see on the news. Things may be difficult but they still want to come here to feed their families and achieve their dreams - and to go back home eventually.'

At least they will find a sympathetic hearing with Lois Nesbitt, a local business owner. 'If you need a local plumber,' she said, 'you have to call five and hope one will show up. Immigrant labourers come to work on time and work hard.'