http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sectio ... ryID=89535

Hood panel challenges stereotypes, covers issues with immigration and immigrants
Originally published April 28, 2009


By Nicholas C. Stern
News-Post Staff

Hood panel challenges stereotypes, covers issues with immigration and immigrants



The United States government subsidized tens of billions of dollars in corn production from 1995 to 2006, according to Hood sociology professor Roger Reitman.

The Environmental Working Group's farm subsidy database puts the total at more than $56 billion.

Some of that corn ends up in Mexico, where it is sold at such low prices that small Mexican farmers can't compete, Reitman said.

Mexican farmers have a choice: They can scrape by in abject poverty or try to make their way to the United States to support their families, he said.

The example illustrates why people immigrate, Reitman said.

Reitman was the moderator of a Thursday panel discussion at Hood about breaking down false stereotypes and understanding the plight of immigrants, legal and not.

The cost of any commodity to a buyer is the cost of the commodity plus cost of shipment. The Mexican village farmer could not produce corn economically for Mexico's urban market but had an advantage within the village. The advantage was unrealized not because of American action it was because the Mexicans left for immediate income from illegal labor instead of investing in developing higher value added products locally produced products.

Jeanie R. Cronin, president of Centro Hispano de Frederick , spoke about her work teaching mostly Latino immigrants, through English classes and law clinics, how to integrate into society.

Since Centro Hispano opened in 2006, the biggest challenge local immigrants have faced is a partnership between the Frederick County Sheriff's Office and federal immigration authorities, she said.

The agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as a 287(g), allows sheriff's deputies to begin deportation proceedings on suspected undocumented immigrants.

In January, Centro Hispano had 65 to 70 English students, she said. Now it has 15 to 20 students.

Acts of domestic violence are sometimes kept from police because people are worried about being deported, Cronin said.

"What happened to human dignity and respect?" she asked. "Immigration is an American experience, acceptance is an American value."

Justin Cox, an attorney for CASA de Maryland, the state's largest immigrant advocacy group, spoke about the 287(g) program.

Congress created the program in 1996, he said.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, the first 287(g) was signed in 2002. By October of 2008, 67 state and local agencies were involved with the program.

The program was sold to Congress as a way to take violent criminals off the street and send them back to their home countries, he said.

But four of 29 program participants reviewed by the GAO in a January report used 287(g) authority to process individuals for minor crimes, such as speeding.

Without enough rules and regulations regarding ICE's supervision of participating agencies, 287(g) has been run differently in different places, Cox said.

When studying the participating jurisdictions, Cox said he saw common factors.

About two-thirds are in the Southeast; populations are overwhelmingly white and relatively small, with growing numbers of immigrants, he said.

Frederick is an illustrative example, he said.

In 1990, about 1 percent of the local population was Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2007, it was about 5 percent.

Cox discussed some common misconceptions about immigrants. People think they increase crime rates and increase education and social service costs, he said.

In reality, immigrants are about 31Ú2 times less likely to commit crimes, in part because they fear deportation or loss of easily revoked legal status, he said.

Cox cited a February 2008 Public Policy Institute of California study for the statistic, which may be conservative, he said.

A 2007 American Immigration Law Center study states that in 2000, native-born men in the U.S. ages 18 to 39 had up to a 5 times higher incarceration rate than foreign-born men of the same age.

Nationally, undocumented workers provide a net gain to tax payments because they never collect on Social Security and other benefits they pay into, Cox said.

He cited a 2005 The New York Times article that quoted Social Security statistics that stated about $7 billion a year is collected in Social Security taxes by workers with incorrect or falsified Social Security numbers.

Officials quoted in the story said they suspected a large proportion of those with false or incorrect numbers were illegal workers.

At a local level, immigrants, regardless of legal status, take a toll on some social services, he said. However, the figure is often exaggerated.

Governments provide only two services to immigrants: public education and emergency medical services, Cox said.

Any solution to illegal immigration would have to involve a normalization of status for the 12 million or so undocumented immigrants already here, he said. Also, if more foreign workers could get visas, the flow of people moving here illegally might lessen, he said.

All panelists agreed that unity among involved citizens is necessary to effect worthy changes.