Settling, uneasily, in the U.S.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/04/news/immig.php

By Rachel L. Swarns The New York Times

Published: August 4, 2006


PEARSON, Georgia For generations, people here have savored the predictable cadences of small-town living. They knew their neighbors and their neighbors' neighbors, the sweet sound of Sunday church mornings and the rumble of tractors tilling the rich soil.

And they knew that most outsiders would drive right through this blue-collar community of tidy bungalows and mobile homes, without stopping or settling, on their way to bigger, busier places.

Then Mexican immigrants started streaming in. Lured in the 1990s by abundant agricultural work and new manufacturing jobs, the newcomers landed in a town with one traffic light, no tortillas in the supermarket and residents who stared openly at foreigners in a county that had seen its last wave of immigrants, the Irish, in the 1850s.

Today, hundreds of Mexican immigrants, both illegal and legal, work in factories, fields and stores; study in public schools; and live in neighborhoods that were once mostly white or black. This year, as many longtime residents anguished over the metamorphosis of their town, Serafico Jaimes opened a Spanish-language video store right off Main Street and proudly hung a Mexican flag alongside the U.S. flag in his storefront window. "This is our town now, too," he said.

His town sits in Atkinson County, Georgia, population 8,030 and a caldron of demographic change. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Mexico, have poured into the South, bypassing traditional settlement states like New York, California and Florida in favor of far- flung towns with thriving industries.

The surge of newcomers has helped drive the fierce debate in Congress over immigration as well as the budding immigrant activism that burst into view this spring when millions of people took to the streets to demand rights for illegal immigrants.

The simmering tensions between Americans and new arrivals have played out here too, far from the national spotlight.

A visit to Atkinson County offers an intimate glimpse at how immigration is rapidly transforming day-to-day life in some small Southern towns.

In 1990, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of the residents in Atkinson County, census data show. By 2004, Hispanics had eclipsed blacks to become the largest minority here, with 21 percent of the population. County officials, who say illegal immigrants have been undercounted, believe that Mexican immigrants and their children may actually make up a third of residents.

The sudden shift is upending traditional Southern notions of race and class, leaving many whites and blacks grappling with unexpected feelings of dislocation and anger as they adjust to their community's evolving ethnic identity.

Elton Corbitt, a white businessman whose family has lived here since the 1800s, said immigration threatened everything that mattered - the quality of schools, health facilities, neighborhoods, even the serene rhythms of small-town life. And he fears that white Southerners here may ultimately become outnumbered or irrelevant. "The way the Mexicans have children, they're going to have a majority here soon," Corbitt, 76, said.

"I have children and grandchildren," he said. "They're going to become second-class citizens. And we're going to be a third world country here if we don't do something about it."

Many immigrants, meanwhile, wrestle with feelings of both pride and alienation as they deepen their roots in a town that remains ambivalent about their presence.

Olga Contreras-Martinez was 12 when she entered the country illegally with her family and picked fruits and vegetables in Florida and Georgia until settling here in 1993. Now a college graduate and a U.S. citizen, Contreras- Martinez feels deeply rooted here.

Yet she says she has never quite fit in, even as she slides seamlessly between English and Spanish.

She still bursts into tears when she remembers how three white men challenged the citizenship of the county's Hispanic voters during a race for county commission in 2004, accusing one candidate of registering Mexicans who were ineligible to vote. Mexican- Americans were ultimately allowed to go to the polls, but the humiliation of that experience lingers.

"Because of my color, my last name, people always question me," said Contreras-Martinez, 31, whose parents, uncles and grandfather all moved to Atkinson County from Mexico.

"I call it home, but I know I'm not welcome in my own home," she said. "Maybe that feeling of home will be something that will always be missing for me."

Migrant farm workers trickled in during the late 1980s and spread the word, telling relatives in Mexico that Atkinson County had good jobs, good schools, open space and a better quality of life than many crowded, crime-ridden communities in border states.

Jaimes, the 43-year-old video store owner, arrived in 1991 to pick peppers and cut tobacco. Jose Ponce came with his family in 1995, even as he worried about how Mexicans would fare in the American South.

"I had told myself, 'Never will I live in that state,'" recalled Ponce.

"But the schools were good," said Ponce, 54, who promotes homeopathic medicines for a Mexican company and is raising three children here.

Today, Harvey's, Pearson's lone supermarket, dedicates three aisles to mole, tortillas, cilantro and other items directed at Hispanics, who now make up 40 percent to 50 percent of the store's customers, according to Rick Merritt, the manager.

And a half-dozen Hispanic-owned businesses have opened, including a bakery and several small grocery stores.

County Commissioner Edwin Davis Sr. serves as the informal leader of county efforts to stem the tide of illegal immigration. He sees negative consequences everywhere - in the shabby mobile homes in some Hispanic enclaves, the Spanish-language graffiti on the shopping plaza and the Hispanic mothers and toddlers crowding into the county's health clinic.

"They're coming here to have babies as quick as they can," said Davis, who emphasized that he opposed illegal arrivals, not legal immigration. "And we're paying for all of those babies."

But as they mingle in stores, neighborhoods and on factory floors, some Southerners and immigrants are trying to reach across the divide.

The Chamber of Commerce, for instance, is now considering recruiting immigrant business owners. On one recent afternoon, Mark von Waldner, the chamber chairman, came into Jaimes's new video store for the first time and shook his hand. "Patrón!" he called out, trying his fledgling Spanish.

On a local Spanish-language radio program, Ponce recently challenged his fellow immigrants to do more to connect to native-born whites and blacks. "How many of us have been here for 10 years and still don't speak English?" asked Ponce, who makes a point of greeting everyone he meets. "That has got to change."