http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/nyreg ... wanted=all

New Haven Welcomes a Booming Population of Immigrants, Legal or Not

Andrew Henderson for The New York Times
Laura Huizar of Junta for Progressive Action helps a couple with taxes.


By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: March 5, 2007

NEW HAVEN, March 1 — The people have been arriving here for years from Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica and Ecuador, some staying just a few months, but more settling in for years.

The way Mayor John DeStefano saw it, there were basically two choices: City officials could look the other way, as if the change were not happening, or they could embrace the transformation, doing whatever was possible to welcome the newcomers.

For now, this city is marching steadily toward becoming a safe haven for immigrants — whether they are in the country legally or not.

The Police Department has adopted a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding citizenship status. City Hall is sponsoring workshops to help illegal immigrants file federal income taxes. And this summer, New Haven plans to allow illegal immigrants to apply for municipal identification cards, in what immigration advocates describe as the first program of its type in the nation.

City officials and immigrant-rights advocates hope these and other initiatives will make immigrants feel more comfortable dealing with life’s bureaucratic necessities — and make them less wary of the police. Officials say the decisions are more pragmatic than ideological, even in this overwhelmingly liberal city of 125,000, where advocates estimate that 3,000 to 5,000 illegal immigrants live in Fair Haven, New Haven’s predominantly Latino neighborhood.

“It stems from a simple central fact that when you’ve got a lot of people living in one place, you have to have certain rules for stability,” Mr. DeStefano said. “You have this population that works hard and lives among us as neighbors; we ought to know who they are. The last thing you want is them not to talk to City Hall because they are afraid of us.”

New Haven’s welcoming policies have, in many ways, trickled down from larger cities like New York, Los Angeles and Houston, but stand in sharp contrast to the expanding crackdown on immigrants announced last week in Suffolk County on Long Island.

Saying that illegal immigrants were hurting Long Island’s economy and quality of life, Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, called for antiloitering legislation to clear day laborers off the streets; vowed to enforce a county law penalizing businesses for hiring illegal immigrants; and welcomed federal immigration officials into the local jail to speed deportation of those who are arrested.

At the same time, immigrant groups in New Jersey are working with Hackensack, Paterson and other places to pass resolutions prohibiting the police or other city officials from questioning residents about their immigration status, joining Newark and Trenton in becoming so-called sanctuary cities.

As more immigrants have bypassed larger cities in favor of smaller cities and towns on the outer rings of urban areas, local governments are increasingly torn by questions like how building inspectors should handle overcrowded apartments and whether garbage collection and other services can be denied based on immigration status.

The issue seems less fraught with tension in New Haven, the home of Yale University and long a hub of liberal social movements. When Mayor DeStefano floated the idea of municipal ID cards here in late 2005, the news ricocheted on conservative talk radio shows, but there were no protests on the steps of City Hall or major outcries from residents.

Indeed, the city had been under pressure to formalize a longstanding policy that police officers would not ask for the immigration status of a person who reported a crime.

Police and city officials have long worried that immigrants had become targets for robbery because they often get paid in cash and carry large sums of money; some said that immigrants were viewed as “walking A.T.M.’s” because they were easy victims who probably would not report crimes for fear of deportation. Indeed, there were several instances in which robbery victims went to community centers for help rather than risk calling the police.

Even if confrontations with the police are isolated exceptions, reports and rumors of them ripple quickly through the immigrant community, which is centered in the Fair Haven neighborhood north of downtown.

“It’s simple. There are some police who want to help, who just want to get the criminals, and there are others who want to cause trouble and scare us,” Pedro Martinez, who has lived in Fair Haven for three years, said in Spanish. “We try to tell each other where it’s safe to walk, which are the good officers, but it’s not always right.”

Mr. Martinez said that he and his friends knew about the Police Department’s new policy, but that it was too soon to tell how much of a difference it would make.

Still, there were signs of reluctance in some quarters. When the Police Department moved to put its longstanding policy into writing, police union officials worried they could be held liable by the federal government. After the city had an immigration lawyer assure them that they were not legally obliged to go after civil law violations, the union said it would back the policy, but some doubters remain.

“Everybody is looking at this as if we were just one big happy family or as if we live in ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,’ but that’s not the case,” said Louis Cavalier, the police union president. “These are people who are breaking the law; when they find them they should put them in the car and ship them back home. Instead, you have people calling their relatives and saying, ‘Hey, come here, where it’s safe.’ ”

Immigration experts doubt a city’s policies could affect an immigrant’s destination more than, say, where relatives live or jobs can be found, but there is at least tacit acknowledgment here that there is political will to try things in New Haven that would be shunned in more conservative communities.

City officials essentially shelved plans for municipal identification cards while Mr. DeStefano was running as the Democratic candidate for governor, though he said he rarely heard complaints about them while campaigning.

Late last year, he hired Kica Matos, the former director of Junta for Progressive Action, an immigration advocacy and community center, as community affairs director at City Hall, and Ms. Matos plans to put several immigrant-friendly policies into effect, including the identification cards.

Like most states, Connecticut requires proof of legal citizenship or residency for driver’s licenses, making it nearly impossible for most illegal immigrants to have an official identification card to use in banks, bars or when dealing with the police.

Though other cities have long distributed identification cards for particular city services, like borrowing books from the library, this would be the first to be issued for general use.

There are still several kinks to be ironed out, including how to encourage legal residents to get the card so that it does not become a de facto scarlet letter for those here illegally. But officials are optimistic that children, Yale students and supportive New Haven residents will sign up; they have also considered asking local businesses to offer some kind of discount for those with the card.

“We know that there is interest from the immigrant community for something like this and that the need for an ID outweighs the potential nervousness about not wanting anyone to know who you are,” said Michael Wishnie, a law professor at Yale who has lobbied the city for immigrant-friendly policies.

For example, Professor Wishnie said, thousands of illegal immigrants have signed up for an individual taxpayer identification number with the Internal Revenue Service, which allows them to pay federal taxes. Many immigrants believe that filing taxes will allow them to prove that they have been working, law-abiding residents if they are eventually considered for citizenship.

This year, for the first time, the city used several workers to recruit immigrants to its low-income tax counseling program. Junta, the primary community agency running the program, has had dozens of applicants come through its doors in the last month.

Maria, who asked that her last name not be used, was fairly typical of the applicants. She said she had lived in the United States for eight years and had always had a job — sometimes for cash, sometimes for a check. As she sat down with a Junta tax counselor, she pulled out W-2 forms for each of the last five years, detailing how much money she had made in her job at a laundry.

“Can I pay for all of these years?” Maria asked, seemingly eager to send the government any money she might owe.

When the counselor replied that she would do the 2006 forms first, and then could do the last three years, Maria looked down at the stack of papers.

“See, this is what I hope,” she said a few minutes later, motioning to her young son sitting next to her. “That if I pay, I can do what they want me to do and become a citizen like my children.”