[Mb-civic] Town's-Eye View of Immigration Debate - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Town's-Eye View of Immigration Debate
In Ga., Influx Fills a Gap in Workforce

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 3, 2006; A01

GAINESVILLE, Ga. -- Harold Hogsed wonders how his grandchildren learn 
anything in school, with all the time their teachers spend instructing 
Hispanic immigrants on basic English. A drawling Georgia native, he 
cannot understand what the Spanish-accented adults are saying. He sees 
them as a drain on his tax dollars and he wishes they would all go home.

"How many people can this country hold?" Hogsed asked. "I don't have the 
solution to it, but something's got to be done."

Hogsed is not alone in struggling to wrap his mind around the tide of 
Latin American workers who have remade this north-Georgia town. City 
schools are now 55 percent Hispanic. More children arrive each day with 
their undocumented parents, often directly from Mexico. The Yellow Pages 
include 41 pages in Spanish. St. Michael Catholic church, which once 
drew 25 people to a monthly Spanish Mass, now has 6,000 Hispanic 
families on its parish registry.

Their numbers show just how rooted the predominantly Mexican immigrants 
have become in Gainesville and throughout the South. They have put 
pressure on public services while becoming essential players in the 
local economy. Amid anxiety on all sides, neighbors, advocates and the 
new residents are assessing their presence and their future in a debate 
that resonates nationally.

Proponents of more generous accommodations for illegal immigrants staged 
a one-day economic boycott on March 24 that shuttered businesses and 
boosted morale. Business and farming leaders declared that immigrants 
are keeping them solvent. At a Mass on Thursday night dedicated to the 
immigrants, the Rev. Fabio Sotelo urged 300 parishioners to persevere, 
pray and write the governor.

Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) is considering a strong anti-immigration bill 
delivered last week by the Georgia legislature. Congress is considering 
significant federal legislation, with Gainesville's congressman, Nathan 
Deal (R), among the firmest supporters of tightened borders and 
toughened measures. Lawyers for U.S.-born carpet workers will argue to 
the Supreme Court this month that a Georgia manufacturer conspired to 
drive down wages by importing illegal laborers.

Gainesville advertises itself as "the poultry capital of the world" and 
it is the chicken-processing plants that are driving much of the city's 
startling growth. Since 1990, the official population has nearly doubled 
to 32,000 and the number of Hispanics has quadrupled to compose nearly 
half the registered population -- and far more when illegal immigrants 
are considered.

When the shift changes at the factories on Industrial Boulevard, 
hundreds of workers in hairnets stream through the doors of Koch Foods 
and Pilgrim's Pride. Their origins are reflected in the Spanish banter, 
the salsa tunes blasting from car radios, and the young ice cream vendor 
who calls his cart La Paleteria Lulu.

"Reality speaks and it says that, absent Hispanic workers, we could not 
process chicken," said Tom Hensley, chief financial officer for 
Gainesville's largest chicken plant, Fieldale Farms. "There aren't 
enough native American people who want to work in a chicken plant at any 
wage. We'd be put out of business."

A dozen years ago, Fieldale employed fewer than 100 Hispanics. Today, 
Hispanics total 3,000 in a 4,700-person workforce that transforms live 
birds by the thousand into boneless chicken flesh. To win jobs that 
start at about $10 an hour, applicants must present at least two 
identity documents from a government list of 18.

"If the documents appear to be legitimate, we accept them," Hensley said.

Two workers said they got jobs at Fieldale with fake documents, a 
practice considered an open secret. One longtime laborer, who spoke on 
the condition of anonymity, said he is counting on Congress -- "in a 
free country, a democracy" -- to design a compromise that legalizes 
needed and reliable undocumented residents.

Praised for excellence by President Bush in his 2004 Republican National 
Convention speech, Gainesville Elementary greets one new student a day 
in a school already 70 percent Hispanic. Nine in 10 students qualify for 
subsidized meals. Educators draft letters in two languages and visit 
homes to urge parents to support the students.

"We're not going to ask, 'Are you legal?' That's not our concern," said 
Principal Priscilla Collins. "We let them know that no one is going to 
come into our schools and do raids. That's not how America works."

Raids are much on people's minds. The telephones at St. Michael have 
been ringing in the past two weeks as anxious residents tracked rumors 
prompted by legislative activity in Atlanta and Washington. Is it true, 
they asked, that immigration agents grabbed 300 people at Wal-Mart? Was 
there a roundup of 500 along Jesse Jewel Parkway? Will agents raid the 
schools on Friday?

No, no and no, Lucia Martin answered.

Martin was sneaked into the country from Mexico at age 3. She remembers 
being tucked under the seat of a truck and told to keep quiet. Her 
family moved to Chicago. Twenty years ago, she arrived in Gainesville 
when her husband found work on the chicken line. She works at the church.

"There's a supply. There's a demand. There's an opportunity and you take 
it. It's human instinct," Martin said. When white residents complain 
that the new immigrants should wait their turn, she answers, "Did your 
ancestors get a visa?"

Martin's worry is that new rules will make it easier for government 
authorities to target immigrants unfairly -- by arresting people on a 
pretext to investigate their legal status. Angel Rojas, a Catholic 
Social Services worker, raised the same issue in advising an overflow 
crowd of educators and community workers to study the potential impact 
of proposed legislation.

"The main thing we need to understand is this affects everybody," Rojas 
said. He noted that one proposal would make it a crime to help an 
undocumented resident remain in the United States. A number of Mexicans, 
he said, have told him they would rather return home with their worldly 
goods than risk losing all during deportation.

That would be cheerful news to legislators who have said they hope to 
increase pressure and create a deterrent. It also jibes with the 
thinking of Joe Merck, a working-class Gainesville native and advocate 
for the homeless who describes the city as "overrun."

"I don't blame 'em coming up here, but half of 'em are illegal. We're 
taking care of 'em. They're having all these babies one right after 
another," Merck, 71, said. "You can go buy your credentials. It's a 
known fact, but nobody does anything about it. We need to send 'em back 
home."

Waiting for a ride, kitchen worker William Morton griped that he cannot 
obtain some restaurant jobs because he speaks no Spanish.

"This country's not right," said Morton, 38. "The economy's went down 
for us and gone up for them, and we're supporting Mexico."

Merck and Morton can be counted in the potential audience for the 
immigration proposals that have suddenly dominated the state and 
national debate. Deal, a seven-term congressman who received an A-plus 
career rating from Americans for Better Immigration, a group that favors 
stricter controls, said the United States is "a nation of law."

"To make sure we have the confidence of the American public behind us, 
we have to show we're going to enforce our law first and foremost," Deal 
said. The nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants "are going to 
have to go home."

Trinidad Avila, 44, is among those who consider that impossible.

Avila, who darted across the Mexican border as a teenager and later 
obtained residency, expects a compromise permitting workers and their 
families to remain, but wonders when. His two teenage children hold 
hands at the dinner table and pray for friends who are here illegally.

"People don't know what they're going to do," Avila said. "They're just 
wishing for the government to do something for them."

Julia Perilla, who studies grass-roots Latino issues at Georgia State 
University, describes a "love-hate relationship" between the new 
immigrants and many Georgians, especially business people.

"On the one hand, they want us very badly. They are very, very dependent 
on Latino labor. On the other hand, there's an incredible amount of 
xenophobia that's on the rise in Georgia," Perilla said. "It's extremes. 
Nobody is in the middle."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040200896.html
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