In Prince William County, Va., ILLEGAL BEANERS WERE "Neighbors From
Hell!"
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"A Hispanic Population in Decline"
"Illegal Immigrant Policy Alters Pr. William on Many Levels"
By Nick Miroff
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 10, 2008; A01
The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home
is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled
holes into the trees to string up a hammock.
Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered
diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in
their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he
would carry a handgun. No more. "So much has changed," she said in a
gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening
recently outside a Costco store.
A short distance away, across the river of retail commerce that is
Sudley Road, Norman Gonzalez spoke of change not as renewal, but as a
kind of collapse.
Business at his restaurant, Cuna del Sol, has declined 50 percent.
Worse still, his extended family's slow, steady relocation from the
Guatemalan town of Jutiapa to the bustling Prince William suburbs has
imploded. "A year ago, I had the biggest family in all of Manassas,
maybe 100 relatives," he said.
Now, Gonzalez, a legal U.S. resident, has his own list: Langley Park,
Chantilly, Fairfax City. That is where his brothers have scattered,
and they will not visit him. "There's too much fear here," Gonzalez
said.
Since the day one year ago when Prince William County supervisors
launched their crackdown on illegal immigration, the gulf between the
Olivers' relief and Gonzalez's dejection has narrowed little, and
possibly widened.
At least there is one thing partisans on both sides agree on: Hispanic
immigrants are leaving Prince William. Whether their departure has
improved the county's quality of life, or pushed its already strained
economy further downward, is the new topic of contention driven
largely by views of whether the presence of immigrants was a good
thing in the first place.
Anecdotes of the trend outstrip hard statistical evidence, yet there
are clear signs that the county's Latino population has reversed its
pace of rapid growth. County officials said there are 4,000 to 7,000
vacant homes in the county. Trustee notices fill the classified
section of area newspapers, chronicling the steady, staggering
forfeiture of properties by homeowners with Hispanic surnames such as
Mendez, Lozano, Medina and Rodriguez.
Last month, there were 776 foreclosure recordings in the Prince
William County, Manassas, Manassas Park area, court records show, up
from 244 in June 2007 and 19 in June 2006.
Would those homeowners have been foreclosed upon anyway, for economic
reasons having nothing to do with the county's illegal immigration
policies? That, too, is disputed.
"You can't attribute all of what might be negative about the economy
in Prince William County to the crackdown," said economist Stephen
Fuller, director of George Mason University's Center for Regional
Analysis. "But it certainly hasn't helped. Neighborhoods that have
been weakened because of migration of the Hispanic community out of
the county have economic consequences that show up as decreases in
retail spending, rental income and potential decreases in the
valuation of some housing."
That decrease -- home prices in some areas have fallen by half -- is
well worth the improvement in quality of life, according to the most
ardent sup****ters of the county's get-tough approach.
"We have far less residential overcrowding, and that was driving
people crazy," said Greg Letiecq, a blogger and president of Help Save
Manassas. He helped write the county's policy and has been its most
vocal champion. "We'd much rather live next door to a vacant house,"
he said, speaking for his members at a recent Help Save Manassas
meeting.
"With an empty house, there's hope that the house is going to have
somebody move into it that's going to be a good neighbor, rather than
an overcrowded house that is a neighbor from hell," Letiecq said,
adding that his Manassas area home has dropped $100,000 in value in
the past year.
The numbers suggest that tensions over crowding have subsided:
Complaints about residential overcrowding dropped to 30 last month
from 79 in July 2007, according to the county's Neighborhood Services
Division.
While some Hispanic immigrants have walked away from their homes,
others have left the county in the custody of federal agents. County
jail officials have turned over 757 illegal immigrant inmates to
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the past year through
an agreement that county supervisors approved as part of the
crackdown.
Police have referred more than 300 additional suspects to the
immigration and customs branch since March, when the county's patrol
officers began screening for residency status.
Catching illegal immigrants has made Prince William safer, said Corey
A. Stewart (R-At-Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors
said. Stewart also said the county's policies have led to "a
plummeting of the crime rate." Police statistics show that the
county's crime rate has been declining since 2004, even as the
population increased.
More im****tantly, Stewart said, Prince William has become a model for
other jurisdictions hoping to act against illegal immigration. "We've
started a wildfire in terms of other localities and states adopting
similar tactics," said Stewart, who discussed the county's immigration
enforcement success Tuesday with the House Republican Policy Committee
on Capitol Hill.
While critics say ethnic tensions in Prince William have worsened in
the past year, Stewart said he believes the debate over illegal
immigration has empowered residents to speak up after "stewing" in
frustration for years. "It's allowed people to discuss their
feelings," Stewart said, citing a new level of public interest in
local government. The board's chambers have been packed with hundreds
of residents on several occasions over the past year.
"It's better for people to feel free to speak out about something they
care about rather than holding it inside, and in that sense, the
controversy has been good for the county as well as the country,"
Steward said.
Paying for the crackdown has been an ongoing source of tension, and
sup****ters have long maintained that the county would save money
through a decreased need for English cl***** for students who speak
another language at home. After years of steady increases, the
percentage of students enrolled in English as a Second Language
cl***** appears to have peaked.
In September, the number of students with limited English proficiency,
not all of whom were Hispanic, was a record 13,404 in the county
school system. By the end of the school year, the total had fallen 4.7
percent, to 12,775.
Then there are the many smaller, symbolic signs that the county has
changed in the past year. Rodeo-themed Latino festivals at the county
fairgrounds, once a summer staple, have been canceled without
explanation by organizers. The El Primero Mercado supermarket on
Centreville Road is now a Shoppers International store. And several
county services, including drug-treatment programs and in-home care
for seniors, now require proof of citizen****p.
Starting this month, for example, a county-funded house-cleaning
service for the elderly will make sure all recipients are legal U.S.
residents.
Such restrictions may not keep illegal immigrants out of Prince
William if the steep decline in housing prices eventually lures legal
and illegal immigrants back to the county. And advocates said Latinos
have learned "clear political lessons" in the past year.
"The community has learned that votes matter," said Mauricio Vivero,
director of the Ayuda Business Coalition, which has lobbied
legislators and has run commercials on CNN warning other
municipalities of the economic consequences in following Prince
William's lead.
Vivero said that fewer than half of the Latinos in Prince William who
were registered to vote in 2004 did so. In November, he predicted,
"there will be a much bigger turnout in Northern Virginia, and [Prince
William's crackdown] has helped push it."
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/09/AR2008070902173.html
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