Thread: Tennessee becomes battleground in immigration debate

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cct ... 412432.htm

Posted on Sun, Apr. 23, 2006

Tennessee becomes battleground in immigration debate
BY DAVE MONTGOMERY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Pedro Mendoza waded across the Rio Grande three years ago and worked for a while in Houston. Now he stands in an alley just south of downtown Nashville, more than 1,000 miles from his native country.

Like several other Hispanic men clustered nearby, Mendoza, a 49-year-old handyman from Durango, Mexico, is waiting for prospective employers known to drive by in vans or pickups each morning looking for day laborers.

On most mornings, he says, he doesn't wait long. Here in the heart of the Volunteer State, jobs are easy to find.

When one thinks of Tennessee, the Grand Ole Opry, Dollywood and Jack Daniels easily spring to mind. These days, though, the state has become something more: a battleground in the national debate over immigration. Since 1990, illegal immigration into Tennessee has surged tenfold as thousands of foreign-born workers are drawn to a robust job market in the nation's interior.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, an estimated 95,000 illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic, had settled in Tennessee by 2004, compared to roughly 10,000 in 1990, and demographers believe the number has further increased over the past 15 months. The 2004 tally puts Tennessee 20th in the country, Pew estimates.

Hundreds of proposed immigration restrictions are moving through legislatures in Tennessee and 41 other states, reflecting a get-tough attitude at the state level while national immigration measures roil Congress. Georgia enacted a sweeping crackdown last week with a new law stiffening enforcement and denying many state services to those in the country illegally.

In Tennessee, anger over illegal immigration crackles over the state's talk radio, laces conservative Web sites, and inflames virtually every political race, including the one to replace retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is using the issue for a possible run at the presidency in 2008.

It also has revealed a far darker reaction.

In November, Daniel Schertz, a former Ku Klux Klan member, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for building pipe bombs to kill Hispanic immigrants. In May 2005, vandals scrawled Nazi graffiti on the La Lupita Mexican store in Maryville, Tenn.

Immigrant rights groups, in turn, are waging a counter-offensive that has drawn thousands of illegal immigrants into the open to participate in rallies similar to those held in other states over the past month. Last week, several undocumented residents joined pro-immigration lobbyist David Lubell as he attended legislative hearings and dropped in on state lawmakers.

"We're still fighting an uphill battle in Tennessee, no about it," said Lubell, director of the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition, which hopes to empower immigrants regardless of status.

More than 20 mostly restrictive immigration measures have been introduced in the Tennessee legislature, including bills requiring written driver's license exams to be given only in English and proposals for state sanctions on employers of illegal immigrants. Several others, including a measure requiring state employees to turn in undocumented immigrants, have been defeated.

The issue also has become a source of political discomfort for Frist, who, as the U.S. Senate majority leader, is embroiled in the lurching efforts to pass immigration legislation. A proposed compromise collapsed on the eve of a congressional recess in mid-April and senators will try to regroup when they return to work this week.

In eyeing a presidential bid, Frist is being tugged by conflicting forces as he tries to find a workable bipartisan consensus in the Senate without alienating conservatives in his Republican Party, including those in his home state, who are pushing for tougher restrictions on immigration.

The leap-frog growth in illegal immigration is tied to a larger Hispanic migration that reaches into states far from the U.S.-Mexican border as Latino workers move into expanding markets with plentiful jobs in construction, farming, landscaping and service industries.

From 1990 to 2000, Tennessee's Hispanic population grew by 278 percent, from 32,741 to 123,838. The state ranked sixth in the growth of foreign-born residents with a 168 percent increase that also included Asians, Africans and other nationalities. Nashville also boasts the nation's largest Kurdish population and served as a regional voting center in the Iraqi elections.

The pattern mirrors that of other states. North Carolina ranked first in the growth of foreign-born workers between 1990 and 2000 with a 274 percent increase. Tennessee's neighbor, Kentucky, ranked 10th, with an increase of 135 percent.

In Nashville, the impact of the influx is evident in the transformation of older neighborhoods south of downtown, where Spanish-language signs sprout from car dealerships, grocery stores and restaurants. Barry Frager, an immigration attorney with offices in Nashville and Memphis, advertises his services on a billboard topped with the eye-catching, "Immigration Problems?"

Each day, Hispanic and other immigrants - some legal, others not - converge at the Woodbine Community Center for night classes in English, job referrals, tax counseling and social networking.

Among those seeking help last week was Marisela Morales, a 36-year-old mother of eight who sold her house and furnishings and paid "a coyote" $2,000 to cross into the United States more than five years ago. Her first stop was Phoenix. She moved to Atlanta and then took to the job trail north to Nashville.

Others follow a similar path, flocking into Tennessee to join family members who got there first or drawn by word-of-mouth tales about abundant jobs and relatively low living costs.

"They want what everybody else wants," says Terry Horgan, director of Catholic Charities' Hispanic services at Woodbine. "They want to make their children's lives better than their own."

But thousands of Tennessee residents, echoing the sentiments of like-minded U.S. citizens in other states, see the illegal immigrants as law-breakers who squeeze Americans out of jobs and strain public services such as schools and law enforcement.

They also put much of the blame for Tennessee's illegal immigration rise to a since-revised 2001 state law that enabled immigrants to get driver's licenses without a Social Security number. Thousands of Hispanics applied for licenses within months after the law went into effect.

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who fought against the bill when she was a member of the state senate, said she believes most Tennessee residents want toughened enforcement against illegal immigration. "From my constituents, everybody agrees that the number one thing we have to do is seal the border," she said last week.

Visitors need only to tune in to Phil Valentine on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN every afternoon to hear the outcry. "It has probably been the dominant topic over the last year," eclipsing even the war in Iraq, says the conservative talk show host.

Valentine, who has been on the air in Nashville since 1985, is leader of what he calls "a De-Magnetize Tennessee" movement to eliminate job and benefits for illegal immigrants. A rally last year drew more than 1,500 in Nashville. Valentine is planning a similar event Thursday in Franklin, south of Nashville.

Another anti-immigration advocate is Theresa Harmon, a suburban mother who helped found Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies. "I have three children," she said. "I do not want them to grow up in a Balkanized county."

I know on talk radio today they were blasting mexican music. Not because they liked it. It was their way of saying get used to it coz Illinois is getting sold out to Mexico.

[qThe entire country is getting sold out to Mexico. Why don't we just hand Fox the deed??uote="crazybird"]I know on talk radio today they were blasting mexican music. Not because they liked it. It was their way of saying get used to it coz Illinois is getting sold out to Mexico.[/quote]

If they could all be sent to the area they claim we stole and let all the Americans out to settle elsewhere, never to be heard of again, with no worker visas or anything else......I'd say give it to them. But they are all over and it would be no time at all they'd be demanding the rest.

Originally Posted by crazybird

If they could all be sent to the area they claim we stole and let all the Americans out to settle elsewhere, never to be heard of again, with no worker visas or anything else......I'd say give it to them. But they are all over and it would be no time at all they'd be demanding the rest.

That's funny Crazybird...My last letter to Frist mentioned that Tennessee is not part of Aztlan. They probably didn't like that.

"They want what everybody else wants," says Terry Horgan, director of Catholic Charities' Hispanic services at Woodbine. "They want to make their children's lives better than their own."

I used to donate to Catholic Charities and now they are going to get a piece of my mind. That office in the article is only a couple of blocks from where I live. Might I mention it is not safe to go out after dark anymore.

I fully understand that probably most of these people are thinking about making their lives better. But not all of them. There is a definite criminal element and disrespect for our culture. It burns me that the Catholic Church is helping when all they really want is to increase the size of their parish. Once again...more selfish motivation.