Thread: A surge in immigration is spawning a backlash

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15767256.htm

A surge in immigration is spawning a backlash
In Charlotte, N.C., the foreign-born population is growing fast. So is the anger against them.

First of two parts

By Paul Nussbaum
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

In the Mecklenburg County jail, an inmate in an orange jumpsuit puts his finger on an electronic pad and watches his fingerprint appear on a computer screen.

Within minutes, the computer returns a name - Arturo Romero - with photographs and a rap sheet that details a history of petty offenses and illegal entries into the United States from Mexico.

Romero, arrested here for having an open container of beer in a vehicle, now faces a trip to an immigration detention center in Atlanta and deportation to Mexico.

In booming Charlotte, where rapid growth and plentiful jobs have attracted thousands of illegal immigrants, Romero is the latest catch in an aggressive new effort to turn routine arrests into one-way tickets out of the country.

With anti-immigration feelings running high and elections just three weeks away, this once-insular state has become a key actor in the national debate over how to absorb - or expel - illegal migrants. North Carolina has had a greater increase in foreign-born population over the last 15 years than any state in the nation: a 412 percent increase, almost five times the national average.

The same concerns and fears being voiced from Hazleton, Pa., to Riverside, N.J., to Phoenix, Ariz., are writ large in North Carolina. Illegal immigration has figured prominently in political campaigns here and in neighboring counties of South Carolina.

"This is the hottest issue I've ever seen," said Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph, a Democrat who is running for reelection. "And it's going to be the hottest issue, maybe next to Iraq, in the presidential election in two years."

Pendergraph said he had received hundreds of laudatory e-mails and letters from constituents and dozens of inquiries from other jurisdictions since he teamed with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train 12 deputies to screen prisoners for their immigration status. Since the program started in April, his office has processed 653 immigrants for deportation.

Now the sheriff is lobbying for a federal immigration court and detention center in Charlotte to handle more cases.

"Congress has let us down. And a lot of the politicians are doing the three-monkey thing - hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil - because they're so afraid of political correctness," the sheriff said. "Political correctness is going to cause us to lose this country."

Others here, however, argue that immigrants are made scapegoats by a community - and a country - that wants their labor but not their presence.

"I know what the politically popular thing to do is, but it's not right," said H. Parks Helms, a lawyer and former state legislator who is chairman of the county commissioners. "We need to be fair and responsible, judicious and measured in our response. And that requires a certain degree of compassion and mature good judgment that is too often lacking in the political arena."

Angeles Ortega-Moore, executive director of the Latin American Coalition here, said, "We are treated like disposable people. It's like we were a disposable napkin - they want to use us and throw us away."

She agrees that the immigration issue has become the hot-button issue of the current political season: "We're the gay-lesbian marriage of this election."

The turmoil in Charlotte highlights the complex calculus of immigration everywhere: the costs balanced against the benefits.

To build the houses and office buildings and shopping malls that are sprouting throughout the region, to landscape the lush lawns and work in the thousands of restaurants and shops, immigrants are vital. But by their presence in local schools and hospitals and jails, they are costing more in taxes than they are paying.

The majority of illegal immigrants in the state are Hispanic. A study by the University of North Carolina this year concluded that the state's Hispanics contributed $61 million less in taxes than they cost in services. But the study also concluded that the deficit was more than outweighed by economic benefits of Hispanic labor, such as keeping wages and costs down.

North Carolina's strong economy has made it a magnet for legal as well as illegal immigrants, and Charlotte's banking and high-tech businesses have drawn workers from Asia and Europe, in addition to Latin America.

In a state whose current population is 8.5 million, the foreign-born population jumped from about 110,000 in 1990 to more than 560,000 in 2005. And in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), the Hispanic population grew by 791 percent from 1990 to 2004, from 6,692 people to 59,645.

Harry L. Jones, the county manager, said he sees the overall effect of immigration - legal and illegal - as positive.

"I think it's a net plus," Jones said. "It's a net financial gain. It provides the ability to get this city built and help economic development.

"And I think that whenever you can create an environment where there are broad differences among us, eventually we emerge as a better people."

Jones cited his own neighborhood, which he said included Spanish, Venezuelans, Indians, Chinese and Belgians.

"It's great to see those differences, to see the children playing in the fountains, to hear their music," he said.

The challenges for the county are especially keen in the schools, Jones said, where the influx of Hispanic children has changed the ethnic makeup from a white majority to a white minority, and in providing health services, social services and recreation.

Illegal immigration, Jones said, has to be dealt with primarily by the federal government.

But many residents have clamored for more local action, and Sheriff Pendergraph's deportation program has been hailed by supporters as proof that local governments don't have to wait on Congress. A galvanizing event was a car accident in July 2005 in which a local teacher, Scott Gardner, was killed and his wife left in a vegetative state after their car was struck by a truck driven by an intoxicated illegal immigrant with a history of drunk-driving arrests.

Most local law enforcement agencies don't try to determine the immigration status of the people they arrest, arguing it would undermine their ability to work with crime victims and others in immigrant communities. And most agencies don't have access to federal immigration data, anyway.

But Pendergraph took advantage of a little-known program, authorized by Section 287(g) of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act, to effectively turn deputies into immigration agents. Ten deputies and two officers were trained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and then given authority to identify and detain illegal immigrants in their custody. And they were given access to the ICE database.

"It's snowballing - we can't keep up with the requests we're getting" from other law enforcement agencies about the 287(g) program, the sheriff said. "People see there is something you can do," Pendergraph said. "Every person we remove from the county is one person you and your family won't meet on a highway."

Ortega-Moore, the advocate for Hispanic migrants, said the new program had increased fear among many immigrants about dealing with police. She said she had heard reports of an incident in which a Latino vendor was assaulted, and police asked the crime victim for his immigration documents.

"I feel very sad and angry," she said. "I don't know if we'll ever feel safe again."

Two Mexican women working at a Charlotte restaurant said they worried about being deported.

"It's a daily worry, especially when you listen to the news," said Blanca Ramirez, 25, who said she came to the United States about a year ago, crossing illegally from Mexico.

Sirenia Trinidad, 40, said she is the sole support for her five children in Puebla, Mexico, who live with her sister. She makes $380 a week, she said, and sends much of it back to them. She traveled for 15 days, crossing the Arizona-Mexico border, to get here, and she's reluctant to go back for fear of getting caught on reentry.

"It's very hard to go back and forth. I can't go visit without papers."

Neither woman drives, and they said that makes them less likely to be deported. "If you get stopped for going against a light, you could get sent back," Ramirez said.

The sheriff said his program affects only people who were arrested for other offenses: "I'm not out here with a net catching people on the street corner."

Bill James, a Republican county commissioner, has been outspoken in favor of tougher laws aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from receiving county benefits and at landlords and employers of illegal immigrants. He said that if Republicans, now a 6-3 minority on the county board, take control, there will be a crackdown on migrants.

"My goal is to make being an illegal in Mecklenburg County both a dangerous proposition and an uncomfortable one," James said. "It's going to be like that saying at closing time at the bar: 'You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.' "

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Contact staff writer Paul Nussbaum at 215-854-4587 or pnussbaum@phillynews.com.

When did it become a benefit to keep wages down. In fact wages are going down for the average working Joe. It should be the task of the local government to try and increase the wages so the local workers can purchase more goods and services. As wages go up that worker can start to purchase a new car ... fix up the house and maybe afford to send a child to college without pushing tens of thousands of dollars of debt onto the student... we have lost track of what made this a great country.

I believe its this admimistration's intention to break the middle class.

This article is about two years behind the times.

The backlash started full swing in this state back in 2004 and is just now getting really hot!

Institution lag I suppose.

W

Go to El Paso Texas where almost no one speaks English. The illegals from Juarez have taken over. All the whites and educated Hispanics are leaving because the local wages are so low due to the large influx of illegals from Juarez. Very 3rd world.

And then you have the opposite end of the extreme in my part of the country. There is virtually no illegal immigration problem and so people are very complacent. They are actually going to vote out a strong candidate against illegal immigration and vote one in who is pro-amnesty, because they are not concerned about this issue.

It is frustrating to try to make them aware of how bad this situation really is in some places and how it could eventually affect them. It seems as though people are so short sighted. They only care about something after it is in their face and really affecting their everyday lives, but by then the situation is so out of control that it is too late.