Thread: Simmering trends and Arizona

COMMENTARY

Simmering trends and Arizona

By By Audrey Singer
Friday, July 2, 2010

Given perceptions of the state nationally, many people were probably not surprised when Arizona passed the most stringent immigration law in recent history.

However, what might surprise is that immigration is a relatively new phenomenon in Arizona. A combination of simmering trends, recently brought to a boil, explains how Arizona emerged both as a major immigrant destination and also as a place with an image of immigration totally out of control.

The new law, defended by supporters as a necessary antidote to federal failures and opposed by those who say it’s discriminatory, requires police to check the legal status of people they stop or arrest. If they are found to be lacking proper documentation, they will be detained on immigration violations.

Three powerful currents led directly to its passage:

• The rise in illegal immigration passing through Arizona

Until recently, most immigrants avoided crossing the border in Arizona due to the treacherous conditions of the Sonoran desert. However, starting with a revamped border enforcement effort – Operations Hold-the-Line in El Paso in 1993, followed by Operation Gatekeeper along the California border – the U.S. Border Patrol began to effectively shut down the most heavily trafficked areas along the border. With successful strategies at the most common crossing places, the Southwest border was seemingly brought under control.

The result was that smugglers and would-be immigrants adjusted course and began funneling through remote areas that had historically seen much less traffic.

The Border Patrol responded by extending its strategic enforcement from the San Diego and El Paso sectors and into Arizona. By 2000, Arizona’s apprehensions spiked, making up 43 percent of all arrests in that year, up from less than 8 percent in 1994.

Coincident with the efforts at the border in the latter 1990s was a booming national economy, creating jobs and housing demand. New routes were charted through Arizona at precisely the moment that metropolitan Phoenix was taking off as a regional growth center in the Mountain West.

• The economic boom, migration and population expansion in Arizona.

Immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, who might have only passed through the state in the mid-1990s on their way to jobs in other regions, now had reasons to stay: a plentiful supply of jobs, particularly in construction and associated industries.

Metropolitan Phoenix saw expansive growth – nearly 1 million jobs, or 141 percent – added between 1980 and 2000, while the U.S. grew total jobs by only a rate of 46 percent during the same period, according to federal data. Between 2000 and 2007, Phoenix’s growth continued as it added 336,000 jobs (21 percent), while the nation’s grew by only 4.4 percent.

Like fast-growing Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Las Vegas, Phoenix was an affordable option for many middle-class families. The Census Bureau estimates Phoenix’s total population grew by 29 percent, or 800,000 people, between 2000 and 2008, while the foreign-born population grew even faster at 49 percent, an additional 225,000 immigrants.



• Demographic change and public opinion.

Arizona’s magnetism drew both U.S.-born and foreign-born residents seeking jobs, new housing and a promising future. By 2008, only 36 percent of Arizona’s population was born in the state, vs. places like Michigan and Pennsylvania with over 80 percent nativity rates. Additionally, the share of Arizona’s population made up of immigrants nearly doubled between 1990 and 2008 to 14 percent. Of the nearly 1 million foreign-born residents, half are estimated by the Pew Hispanic Center to be unauthorized.

This dynamism, a sign of growth and progress during economic good times can feel transitory and alienating during a severe downturn.

Since the fall of 2007, Phoenix has lost nearly 12 percent of its jobs, one of the worst declines among all metropolitan areas during the recession.

Few states saw greater growth in their child population in this decade. With shrinking state and local budgets, the half-million children in Arizona that have at least one foreign-born parent can feel like a burden, especially if the perception – true or not – is that their parents are in the United States without legal status. The widening gulf between the aging white population and the growing nonwhite child population can provoke competition and conflict about public spending.

Adding high-profile, drug-related violence on the border to this swift demographic transformation and the mixture is ripe for “the localsâ€

Seems every time I turn around the Pew Hisspanic Center appears to be the "last word" on latino demographics. What do they do all day? Just go around to the neighborhoods, bars, welfare centers, churches and Home Depots and try to come up with bogus stats? Who asked THEM, anyway and who cares what they have to say?

The rise in illegal immigration passing through Arizona

Until recently, most immigrants avoided crossing the border in Arizona due to the treacherous conditions of the Sonoran desert. However, starting with a revamped border enforcement effort – Operations Hold-the-Line in El Paso in 1993, followed by Operation Gatekeeper along the California border – the U.S. Border Patrol began to effectively shut down the most heavily trafficked areas along the border. With successful strategies at the most common crossing places, the Southwest border was seemingly brought under control.

The result was that smugglers and would-be immigrants adjusted course and began funneling through remote areas that had historically seen much less traffic.

So illegal immigration through and into AZ increased as a direct result of actions of the federal government. Hey, Obama, you broke it, you bought it. Fix what you damaged!

And, the people that control our futures don't have a clue what it's like to live in a neighborhood where they slit people's tires at night, shoot windows out of homes, discharge firearms for the fun of it, require Spanish in local stores just to buy the simplest of things. Arrogant blowhards that don't have a clue.

I just moved out of Arizona and I'm still not used to living around people who don't threaten me at every move. I was the "white person" in the neighborhood and it irks the hell out of me when people refer to them as "good, hard-working people that just want to take care of their family." Well, I am too. But, they physically threatened me, rammed my car, threw their garbage in my back yard. Anything to get the "white person" to move.

As far as I'm concerned, a "good, hard-working" person would not do that. I'm a good hard-working person and I would never even consider pushing another good, hard-working person out of their home because they are a different race than me. These people want to take over. There is no "good, hard-working" in there. Just divide and conquer.

From a person that has actually experienced them up close and personal.