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1 of 1- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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Immigration. More Complicated than a Sound Bite
Iowans Question G.O.P. Talk on Illegal Immigration
By JULIE BOSMANSEPT. 4, 2015
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Like many voters in Iowa, Ben Hoopes has been listening closely to all the tough talk about illegal immigration coming from the Republican presidential candidates who have crisscrossed his state every week.
There was Donald J. Trump’s plan to build an impenetrable wall across the border and force Mexico to share the cost. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said that immigrants who do not fully integrate and learn English are guilty of “invasion.” Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, last weekend suggested tracking new immigrants like human FedEx packages.
Mr. Hoopes, 33, a salesman and Republican voter in Muscatine, believes something needs to be done about unauthorized workers in Iowa, so he welcomes the attention to the issue. But he worries: Are the candidates telling the crowds only what they want to hear? Is a complicated issue becoming oversimplified?
“It’s just a show right now,” Mr. Hoopes said, pausing from his job at a carpet store downtown. “I heard today that Scott Walker might want to build a wall on the Canadian border. I didn’t realize illegal Canadian immigration was such a big problem.”
Perhaps more than in many parts of this region, residents in Muscatine County, in eastern Iowa, have developed a nuanced view of the immigration issue, informed by time, proximity and experience. Well over a thousand miles from the Mexican border, Muscatine County’s farms, factories and meat-processing plants have long been a draw for immigrants, causing the foreign-born population in the county to more than double since 1990.
In more than two dozen interviews here this week, Republican voters said they agreed with candidates that illegal immigration might be costing too much in taxpayer money for schools, health care and welfare. But they also said that Latino immigrants can boost the economy by taking grueling jobs that many Americans do not want, such as detasseling corn and processing meat in factories throughout Iowa.
“I’m as prejudiced as the day is long,” said Chuck Coghill, who runs a sign company in the rural town of Blue Grass with his wife, Michelle. “It’s a bad thing that all these illegal Mexicans are here.” He paused. “But they’re hard workers. They’re doing jobs that lazy Americans won’t do.”
Some voters said that many Latinos they know, regardless of immigration status, were as Iowan as anybody, having raised families and attended schools and churches in their communities.
DeWayne M. Hopkins, the mayor of Muscatine, said that many migrant workers came to the area generations ago, in the 1950s, to work in the tomato fields, then stayed to raise their families. White people make up about 81 percent of the population in Muscatine County, compared with 89 percent statewide, and Latinos account for about 16 percent. Eight percent of county residents indicated that they were both white and Hispanic, according to census data.
“If you see a young middle-school Latino lad on the street, he probably doesn’t even speak Spanish,” Mr. Hopkins said.
Carolyn Lamp, the owner of a secondhand furniture store in the town of West Liberty, where more than half the residents are Latino, said she was impressed after hearing Mr. Jindal talk about immigration on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. But she also worried that he was taking a narrow view of the problem.
“He’s basically proposing to shut down the borders,” she said, sitting in her shop on a humid afternoon this week. “That’s fine to say. But I think there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s not a cut-and-dried issue.”
Haydee Avalos, 51, one of Mr. Hoopes’s employers at the carpet store, said that as the daughter of Mexican immigrants she was regularly taunted for being Hispanic when she was growing up in Iowa. “I’m an anchor baby,” she said pointedly, echoing the phrase recently used by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.
“The neighbors would call us tacos, and my mom would say, ‘You just go back out and call them hamburgers,’” Ms. Avalos recalled. These days, “there’s way more Hispanics than there ever has been,” but she still overhears occasional racist remarks.
Ms. Avalos said she has found the discussion of immigration policy from Mr. Trump frustrating, though she has voted Republican in the past.
“There’s just too much negativity,” Ms. Avalos said. “Donald Trump was on the news the other day and started in on it, and I just turned it off.”
Beyond Mr. Trump, other Republican candidates have offered tough proposals for deterring illegal immigration. Mr. Bush, for instance, has vowed to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities and deport immigrants who have overstayed their visas. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has argued for ending automatic citizenship to the children of immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democratic contenders, both favor a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Anthony Pestle, 23, a warehouse driver who was born in Iowa but whose grandparents came from Mexico, said he had read about the Republicans’ immigration comments on social media, though he has not decided which party he will support in 2016. The way Republicans talk about Latinos bothered him, though.
“If it keeps going this way,” he said, “it would probably make me lean toward the Democrats.”
People who live here say that in the span of two or three decades, their communities have been transformed. Beyond the proliferation of Mexican restaurants and supermarkets founded by immigrants and their descendants, some white-owned businesses have tried to cater to Latinos, tacking on “Se Habla Español” to their newspaper ads if they have even a single Spanish-speaking employee on staff. Schools have adopted dual-language programs in Spanish and English. Whites and Hispanics, once deeply distrustful of each other, have slowly become more integrated.
“It’s changed,” said Michelle Coghill, who praised Mr. Trump’s “radically different” views. “I think there is less prejudice now that more of the Hispanics have come into the job market, the schools, and everything.”
Jeff Hunt, a manager of Neal’s Vacuum and Sewing Center in downtown Muscatine, said that Latino immigrants have recently been joined by people from Liberia. “We’ve gotten more culturally diverse,” he said, adding that he tries to make conversation in Spanish with Hispanic customers, even if it’s only a simple “Hola.” “You learn to work with everybody.”
But resentments over the presence of unauthorized immigrants in Iowa still bubble to the surface. At the top of many white residents’ concerns is a suspicion that some immigrants who came here illegally are committing crimes and using public schools, food stamps and welfare. Some residents in towns throughout Muscatine County have blamed Latinos when they see homes that have fallen into disrepair and front lawns that are not kept tidy.
Mary Jo Mullins, a 75-year-old retiree who lives here, said that while she admired the work ethic of many immigrants, she was concerned that they were using entitlements without contributing enough in taxes and Social Security. “People have put money into the system for a long time and now people who are here illegally are taking it out,” she said.
Some Iowans said that the responsibility should lie with employers to screen workers, reducing the incentive for people to come into the United States illegally.
“It’s twofold: you’ve got people here who want to work and employers who want to employ them,” said Cyndi Hammes from Wilton, a town of 2,800 people, as she left the post office on Tuesday afternoon. “Employers want to hire a lower-cost work force in order to cut their bottom line. They should be held accountable.”
Ms. Hammes, 54, said she is a registered Republican and has paid close attention as the Republican presidential candidates have suggested tightening border security and deporting anyone who is found in the country illegally.
“They talk a really good game, but what about the logistics of implementing it?” she said. “They don’t have a plan to carry it out. Actually, I think immigrants should be helped through the process of becoming legal citizens.”
Kenny Lincoln, 71, a retired bricklayer and registered independent, said that if he had to vote today, he would vote for Mr. Trump. But he also said that he did not like the Republican oratory on immigration: he knew people who had entered the country illegally and he could not in good conscience favor sending them back to Mexico, as Mr. Trump and other Republicans have suggested.
“There are some good people who are here from Mexico,” Mr. Lincoln said. “You can’t blame these people for coming over from there. I know an immigrant and he’s not asking for a thing. They’re integrated here. It’s a small community and everybody gets along.”
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.