This story, in the Chicago Tribune, eloquently touches upon the more deep seated issue that faces America. In my opinion, we, as a nation, are facing an identity crisis. Who are we as Americans? Are we a belief of values, espoused by Thomas Jefferson, and our forefathers? Are we really a nation based on the content of our character or the color of our skin? Very soon, the identity of America will look very different, within decades, “white” Americans will become the minority. What does that mean, and how will we integrate this new dynamic into our culture?
It’s a sense of unrest familiar in small towns and suburbs across America. Immigrants have flooded the country in great numbers in the past. What’s different now is where they’re settling—far from the border states and big cities that long absorbed the huddled masses.
Their integration into small-town America is marked in Manassas, as elsewhere, by a language of fear, resentment and anger. Under pressure from longtime residents, local officials have cracked down, ordering police to dramatically increase the amount of time spent checking people’s Immigration status.
Those authorities say they’re targeting illegality. Others say they’re simply going after brown people.
If we’re due a national conversation about the changing complexion of America, though, it’s not happening in the 2008 campaign.
Barack Obama and John McCain both support what they call “comprehensive” Immigration reform, but neither spends much time on this volatile topic in his presidential campaign. When they do, they don’t address the fundamental tension of America’s great Immigration debate today.
In Manassas, some old-timers watch their home changing and fight the newcomers. Others fight that backlash.
For all of them, it’s a battle for their very identity.
A new complexion
For most of our history, immigrants settled largely in the Northeast and the Midwest. In 1920, nine out of 10 immigrants lived in cities of more than 100,000. The quintessential immigrant destination was Manhattan’s Lower East Side.Now the decline of traditional manufacturing is redirecting immigrants to agricultural centers in the South, tourist centers in the West, smaller cities all over. The Census Bureau first picked up on this dispersion in the 1980s, but the proportion of immigrants in small towns really took off in the mid-1990s.
In Prince William County, where Manassas sits, whites went from 65 percent of the population in 2000 to 52 percent in 2006. Hispanics increased—from 10 percent to 20 percent, roughly—in the same period.
Maureen Wood liked the diversity at first. The students at the high school where she is a substitute teacher taught her Spanish words.
Then the school district put up mobile classrooms.
A friend’s son couldn’t get work as a landscaper when he came home from college for the summer. The company owner said he only hired native Spanish speakers, to make it easier for his crew and foreman.
The changes turned Wood and Kipp into activists. Pressure from citizens like them is having a powerful effect in Prince William County.
Last year, the county board of supervisors ordered its police force to inquire more regularly about people’s Immigration status. They later scaled back that directive, but the thunderous debate had its effect, as immigrants started running scared. Hundreds withdrew from English-as-a-second language programs in local schools.
I think our culture has always been and will continue to be in flux. We were agrarian. Now we’re more urban. We once accepted legally-forced segregation. Now that acceptance is a personal choice. Our gender and racial roles have been liberated. Some people find these changes frightening and others find them empowering. Had no Hispanic person ever moved to Manassas or PWC, we would still be forced to accept substantial change as the population has become more educated, wealthier, more densely settled. Some people would demand a higher level of services and be willing to pay for them and others would want the opposite. Some people are willing to pay for GMU’s Arts Center and some people are stingy about spending on the arts. They may prefer to waste their money elsewhere. 😉
Illegal immigration is the key here – not immigration. I am very disappointed in the title and content of this article and I am unsure if the editor is responsible, or the author. At any rate, the omitted facts are as follows:
We are not upset about immigration, we are upset about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. There are many negative effects in our neighborhoods that were not pointed out or glossed over in this article: illegal alien boarding houses with 20-30 people living in a single family home, yards turned into parking lots to accommodate all of the work vans, trucks, and vehicles, yards unkempt, trash heaps in yards, maintaining outside storage against county code, rats attracted to the trash heaps, parking on the grass, females (including young girls) being sexually harassed, men urinating outdoors in full public view, foreclosed properties being utterly destroyed by the illegal aliens prior to abandonment, illegal alien day laborers congregating in large groups and on private property in their quest for illegal employment (felony), overcrowded schools, overburdened emergency departments in hospitals providing free healthcare to illegal aliens, gang graffiti such as MS-13 and SUR-13, rapes of 5 and 10 year old girls committed by illegal aliens, more than half of the murders last year being committed by illegal aliens, etc… Virtually every aspect of our lives are affected by illegal aliens. Taxes, health and social services, public safety, education, traffic congestion, quality of life in our neighborhoods.
Of course the reporter didn’t specify we were talking about ILLEGAL immigration, regardless of country of origin.
Maureen
So, Maureen, what specific problems were you looking for and how did you determine the immigration status of the scofflaws?
Are you, as a white woman, threatened by the demographic changes in PWC and Manassas? You don’t have x-ray vision to determine immigration status so what exactly bugs you?
Before everyone freaks out, let’s remember Caucasian Americans will be a minority, but they will be the LARGEST minority.
It is unfortunate that this article didn’t clarify that Allison and I were talking about illegal immigration, not immigration. Also the comment about “Hispanic” men at the 7-11 should have stated illegal day labors. 85% to 90% of day laborers are illegal aliens. This is NOT about race or the color of one’s skin, it is about being illegal!
I turn in zoning violations period. I do not know who lives in the houses. Don’t know the color, race, or gender of the occupants, nor do I really care
Maureen
Maureen,
Let me emphatically state that your quote about the students speaking Spanish is an indicator that they aren’t willing to assimilate is absolutely dead wrong. It just means they’re bilingual. Do you realize these kids most likely can’t read or write Spanish and their children will most likely lose the language all together. Don’t you get that?
Admin,
Check your link to the article above. It’s malfunctioning. You need to take out the second http forward-slash forward-slash
Alanna, 25. September 2008, 17:43
Maureen,
Let me emphatically state that your quote about the students speaking Spanish is an indicator that they aren’t willing to assimilate is absolutely dead wrong. It just means they’re bilingual. Do you realize these kids most likely can’t read or write Spanish and their children will most likely lose the language all together. Don’t you get that?
————————————————————–
How does speaking Spanish make one bilingual?
TDB,
I apologize the link is malfunctioning. I have fixed it so that everyone can read the entire article.
Maureen, how are you and Allison going to determine immigration status? Why mention immigration at all because you have no way of knowing anyone’s status. So you’re really not out there fighting illegal immigration when you and Allison are playing ICE in your van.
Maureen said: “I turn in zoning violations period. I do not know who lives in the houses. Don’t know the color, race, or gender of the occupants, nor do I really care.”
Censored – what don’t you GET about Maureen’s comment above. Comprehension problems?
Boohoo, maybe you can explain what Maureen’s claim that the article did not make the difference between illegal immigrants and immigrants has to do with zoning violations.
Listen, I don’t like when there’s a sign in Spanish with no English equivalent. I’ve gone to the Sprint/Nextel at Westgate where they only have the plan brochure in Spanish or the DMV to pick-up a driver’s manual, same thing when I went to pay my County taxes, they only had a Spanish version flyer. And I get advertising mail sent to me in Spanish just because of my last name.
I just have a hard time taking the extra step and saying that it’s the illegals fault.
Censored bybvbl, you stated:
Unless Chief Deane and his police department, per the enforcement of the “Rule of Law Resolution”, has identified all of the day laborers as illegal aliens, then no one can definitively state with any certainty what their residency status is.
So the answer is simple: folks like Allison and Maureen flatly assume the day laborers are “illegal aliens” because, quite simply, the majority of them to all outward appearance are Hispanic/Latino and speak Spanish.
If it were a dozen white men at the day labor site, would anyone question their residency status? No. Of course not.
It is no longer possible for motivated activists to hide behind the unconvincing facade of “it’s about illegal immigration” (or as Maureen put it, it’s about “being” illegal).
This is not about immigration, illegal or otherwise. This is, and has always been, about racial intolerance.
Robb: “If it were a dozen white men at the day labor site, would anyone question their residency status? No. Of course not.”
If it were a dozen white men at the day labor site, they would have been run off, fined, or arrested by now. If they were a bunch of black men – the same would happen. But no, because they are latino – they get a pass. What a world.
Robb: “If it were a dozen white men at the day labor site, would anyone question their residency status? No. Of course not.”
If it were a dozen white men at the day labor site, they would have been run off, fined, or arrested by now. If they were a bunch of black men – the same would happen. But no, because they are latino – they get a pass. What a world.
P.S. Robb – YOU just proved in your statement, that YOU are racially intolerant.
Robb, you’re right when you say that the real issue is not immigration status since it cannot be determined by looking at someone.
Boohoo, are you part of the group that is continually outraged by the presence of the day laborers? Their presence has become much more than a mere loitering issue – afterall, the owner apparently is unwilling to go to court to resolve the problem – it has become a win/lose game for GL and his vigilante minions. As long as a day laborer remains, GL views it as a loss. He really should find more productive ways to spend his time. Cleaning up the graffiti is a start and the energy expended should work off some of the hostility.
As to the issue in PWC being about racial intolerance and not “illegal immigration”, it is exactly the reason I thanked Corey Stewart this past Tuesday night during citizen’s time. Recall that he is the one who recently stated the following when discussing the Satisfaction Survey:
The reason I thanked Corey was because he, whether by error or by design, finally exposed the issue openly and honestly for what it’s truly all about: racial intolerance.
Corey Stewart’s inference could not have been clearer: Spanish speaking people are suspect as to their legal residency status by mere virtue of their (assumed) Hispanic/Latino heritage.
And so is revealed the formula: illegal aliens are despised + most illegal aliens are Spanish speaking people and Hispanic/Latino = hence Spanish speaking people of Hispanic/Latino descent are to be despised.
Rob,
Here is a study that finds 84% of day laborers are illegal aliens:
Abel Valenzuela Jr., “Day labourers as entrepreneurs? Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles Area,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, April 1, 2001.
Day laborers are working for substandard pay and have no benefits such as health care or insurance if injured on the job. If they were legal do you think they would work under those conditions? I would think if you cared so much about hispanics you would want to end day laborer sites because of the near-slave situation this puts them in.
Maureen,
What do the students you sub for think of your viewpoints and comments, since you have been publicly vocal on this issue?
Pax,
It doesn’t matter what the statistics say. What matters is that it’s wrong.
For that matter, Maureen, what do the permanent staff at the school in which you sub think of you being a spokesperson for what goes on there? Do you discuss this with them? Is your substitute teaching job another way for you to monitor what is wrong with Manassas (like documenting community problems during a minivan patrol)?
Mackie, 25. September 2008, 19:43
….so says the Mackster – It’s only wrong in your eyes and in the eyes of the other two or three regular posters on this blog.
DiversityGal, 25. September 2008, 19:45
Dolph – And what did your students think of your views during your teaching career?
boohoo,
Were you talking to me (I suddenly feel like DeNiro…) or Dolph?
I keep my professional life completely separate from my private life. I do not talk about illegal immigration at school.
Most teenagers have no interest in was is going on in the world beyond high school.
Maureen
Note: Obviously this isn’t a factual statement since the newspaper article from your personal life is speaking about your professional life. Second sentence is as equally STUPID as your first. You don’t believe those Spanish speaking kids have any interest in whether or not they, their families, their friends families get separated by deportation?
Maureen,
Glad to hear that you try to keep it separate. However, some of your colleagues must be aware of your comments in the press and in front of the City Council? Am I wrong?
I think that most teens in your high school would be interested to hear that they have no interest in current events. I think that even some of the teaching staff in your own school would beg to differ.
DG,
I agree with your comment above…what’s with the record number of young voters if they are so apathetic?
Maureen and Robert Duecaster obviously run in the same circle. They both know/ have spoken to the young man that couldn’t get a job at A landscaping company. Notice it does not indicate that he tried to get a job at more than one landscape company. There is no way Ruppert Nurseries or Tru Green would have turned away a college kid they’d be sizing him up for a management position after college. I know they are laying people off now because of the economy, but if this happened last year or the year before… I worked for a landscape company for 5 years (1995-2000) and in those years, we DID NOT HAVE ONE applicant that was not latino.
Personally, I’ve heard Maureen speak very highly of her students. She cares deeply about them and would never do anything to jeopardize her relationship with them. I don’t care what color, race, religion, socio-economic status they fall in – you name it – she does not treat one student any differently than another. For you to insinuate that she does is hateful.
My child has had her as a substitute many times – he thinks the world of her and speaks very highly of her.
You people will stoop to any level to drag someone else down.
And I thought you wanted to heal the community – you know – oneness and all of that….
Sad.
We go back and forth, back and forth…some people see everyone else’s ethnicity prejudice but their own (case in point you Robb, because you are angry at ANY majority, not THE majority.) “Majority” by the way is based on a DEMOCRATIC VOTE, RESULTING IN LAW.
Do you who challenge the “legality” of “legal” immigration LAW, not realize that the fundamental issue is RAPID change? And people who are a majority in a democracy see ANY rapid change as POLITICALLY threatening? Do you understand political threats? Political threats are where people “gang” together of similar ethnicities (ANY ethnicity), and take over your government, take over your community, destroy your financial stability, your “quiet and lawful” culture, and turn it into an “ethical” cesspool. That is what people are fighting against, all people of all nations who would seek to undermine peace and prosperity of a community.
The issue really is about lawlessless, especially any lawlessness that effects zoning, community appearance, community beauty, community wealth, community social structure, community rituals, rights, holidays, beliefs, habitual and legal “comfort” zones, housing value, business value, transportation resources, social resources and taxes, not to mention the HUGE effect that lawlessness has had on the CREDIT Market industry and the impending meltdown of our entire economy for the next 10-15 years because of the “illegal” immigration of 25-40 million people into this country in the last 20 years (most of which have only recently become legal, and fueling even more illegal entry), by taking on HUGE DEBT and foreclosing on homes they recently bought but could not afford without great financial risk.
Does that bother no-one? Do you really think this issue is about race, gender, religion and ethnic “solidarity”, “ethnic celebration”, “ethnic seperation”, and political ethnicity, gender and religious group solidarity?
No! its about the damage such ethnic centric belief systems and politcal manipulation by people who sympathize only with their own race’s political and financial benefits, by CONDEMING OTHERS and expressing their hatred of a “Majority” of people in this country who have been here a LOT longer than they have, and have NOT broken law, not looked for jobs at 7-11 and on the streets, not destroyed the beauty and financial wealth of communties and not threatened the social lifestyles of ANYONE living next to them for DECADES regardless of race, religion, gender ot ethnicity.
YOU who oppose people who want to stop the “negative effects” on this nation caused by “illegal” immigration want to “bask in the glory and self-grandization” of a ethnic social rebellion! That is why the masses and majority oppose you, not because of your color, but because of the way you act…think about that without letting your own ethnic hatred for the majority consume you into irrationality and desperation for your own desperate struggle for ethnic centric self identity and artifical self-esteem.
Great post, Michael. That about sums it up.
Twinad, their is something fundamentally wrong with an econmy that has an industry that only gets one ethic group applying for a job. Something and someone has created that unacceptable financial and ethnic group bias by unfair and biased wage scales.
I.e do you not see their is something fundamentally unsound and unethical about a job market and sense of wage fairness when you (as you quote) claim “we DID NOT HAVE ONE applicant that was not latino”. Are you saying all OTHER ethnicities have NO poor people? I seriously doubt that….
Take a trip sometime to the mountains and the mid-west, where people of all ethnicities are DESPERATE for ANY job. The reason only one ethnicity applies is because of who is hiring them….the laws they (MAY) break, and the wage they pay.
“That is why the masses and majority oppose you, not because of your color, but because of the way you act…think about that without letting your own ethnic hatred for the majority consume you into irrationality and desperation for your own desperate struggle for ethnic centric self identity and artifical self-esteem.”
Michael,
To whom are you directing this comment, because when you say ‘you, not because of your color’ and ‘your ethnic hatred for the majority’ and ‘your own desperate struggle for ethnic centric self identity’ etc… it makes me wonder who do you think your audience is?
The masses, and anyone who thinks only in terms of color.
I condemn thinking in color. I think only in terms of individuals who break the law and destroy communities.
My audience is any of you who will listen to reason, and not wage your own ethnic-centric war, when the real issue is LAW and the destruction of everything I talked about above.
I’m tired of people turning this into racial issues, and racial thinking when it is not.
The majority has no color, it only has a VOTE and legal law made by that vote in a democracy. THAT is the issue.
You don’t get it do you? Minorities today think only in terms of color, theirs and everyone elses that is opposed to them that can be “classified” as a majority. The majority in a democracy does not think in color (it is composed of ALL colors) and it thinks only in terms of legal LAWS made by that majority applied to individuals regardless of color. That is why they “the majority” are very angry at the impact on the peace and financial wealth of communities caused by “illegal” immigration. It destroys and undermines a majority democracy composed of ALL colors and threatens to turn it into an ethnic centric nation.
Michael,
I know the majority of the people that are posting here and I guarantee they are not approaching this issue from an ethno-centric perspective. We are not minorities, nor are we persons of color, and we are not advocating anything based on someone ethnicity. If I’ve mischaracterized anybody, please feel free to speak up.
Pax, you stated:
For starters, one correction: any human being injured or ill and in need of medical assistance in this country has access to emergency health care, even if they do not have insurance or other means to immediately or adequately pay for such care.
As to the economic inequities experienced by many immigrating people in this country who do not possess legal residency status, such is part of the reason why I support amnesty. It is humane, and would be to their benefit, and ours as well.
Kids care very much about things, especially if it pertains to them. I expect they really care about someone working constantly to have their parents and older siblings deported. That’s probably why I wouldn’t do activist work with anti-illegal immigration work if I worked at a school.
boohoo,
I am very sorry that you consider me to be hateful. I was definitely not insinuating anything about how Maureen treats students. She probably treats them just fine.
I just want to know what her students and colleagues think of her views, as they might have seen them online, in print, etc. I believe it is an important thing to consider the thoughts and feelings of those around you…those you work with and care for each day.
When I asked that question of Maureen, she replied that teenagers aren’t concerned with anything but high school. This tells me that she probably has not considered what her students might think about her viewpoints about this issue and/or them; she may not care what they think…who knows?
I am concerned that, as a substitute teacher, she is speaking to newspapers about her views on student’s language habits and incentives to assimilate within the school. When there is an article out there about her patrolling neigborhoods to gather evidence, and then she also presents evidence from her job, I think it is a fair question to ask if she uses her job as a method to monitor the state of the community, as well.
that should be “neighborhoods”
Well said Alanna!
Michael, how do you respond to Corey asking the surveyor if he questioned the spanish speakers about their legal status? How does this demonstrate a color “blind” government?
The fixation on day laborers is amazing. In this area, the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants have regular jobs. Day laborers represent only a tiny fraction. How a few dozen men in each given parking lot can become representative of a population that numbers 300,000 in Virginia boggles the mind. In any case, set up a center and get the problem out of the parking lots.
Regarding claims by some that the issue is only illegal immigration and not immigration, perhaps you might want to check out FAIR, you know, the folks who helped draft the resolution and see their position. Or check out CIS, an offshoot of FAIR. Its executive director, Mark Krikorian, has a new book out. Its title? “The New Case Against Immigration: Legal and Illegal.”
It is crystal clear from so many comments I have read here and “elsewhere” that the objection for some is grounded in ethnic difference and numbers, not legal status. 22 percent of illegal immigrants in the United States are not of Latino background. This area has plenty of illegal immigrants not of Latino background. Yet over and over the emphasis is on Latinos as Latinos in the crudest terms. If tomorrow they all obtained legal status, the complaints would remain the same.
“No! its about the damage such ethnic centric belief systems and politcal manipulation by people who sympathize only with their own race’s political and financial benefits, by CONDEMING OTHERS and expressing their hatred of a “Majority” of people in this country who have been here a LOT longer than they have, and have NOT broken law, not looked for jobs at 7-11 and on the streets, not destroyed the beauty and financial wealth of communties and not threatened the social lifestyles of ANYONE living next to them for DECADES regardless of race, religion, gender ot ethnicity.”
…really…WOW…Oh the clean and blameless Majority, how oppressed you have been for so long! Your privilege and power is just a myth that these “others” have laid upon you. All these petty little groups with their petty little interests have ganged up on you, bullied you, and made things downright NOT PRETTY. You are mad, Majority, and you are just not gonna take it anymore. All those minorities and ethnic-centric groups are nowhere near as enlightened as you. It’s time for you to stand up and talk about democracy, law, and majority utopia. If the world could only know what you have known for so long…Your audience may get a little dizzy at first, but hopefully they will emerge as color-blind as you, right? —YIKES!!!!!!!
Just gotta say it…minorities and ethnic-centric groups, if lovin’ you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right:)
The economic crisis looks huge. Please call your congressman and speak out against this bailout for the rich. If you’re in the 11th district:
Rep. Tom Davis
Washington, D.C. Office:
2348 Rayburn House Office Building,
District of Columbia 20515-4611
Phone: (202) 225-1492
Fax: (202) 225-3071
Sen. James Webb
Website: webb.senate.gov
Washington, D.C. Office:
144 Russell Senate Office Building,
District of Columbia 20510-4604
Phone: (202) 224-4024
Fax: (202) 228-6363
Sen. John Warner
Website: warner.senate.gov
Washington, D.C. Office:
225 Russell Senate Office Building,
District of Columbia 20510-4601
Phone: (202) 224-2023
Fax: (202) 224-6295
This bailout will only prolong the pain. The free market is naturally punishing the bankers who brought this disaster on themselves. The bankers are turning to socialism for the rich to save themselves. They are passing the bill onto us. The stability the bailout will buy will only be temporary in nature.
Socialism for the rich, just rewards failure until we all go bankrupt:
http://mises.org/story/3120
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzuQXDS2ttM&feature=related
Michael, you’ve once again missed the point entirely and have demonstrated that you have absolutely no understanding about what law is truly all about.
Law (particularly codified law) is not an end unto itself, nor is law always necessarily just.
And if you’ve taken the time to understand the core philosophy upon which American Independence was declared (you need only read the first paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence), and which America’s Founders understood the role of government and the role of law to be, you would realize that laws written by man are not absolute, but instead must affirm and uphold Natural Law.
And if such laws written by man fail in their required fidelity to Natural Law, then they deserve not only to be opposed but to be utterly abolished.
America’s Founders understood the provisions of Natural Law and its truths to be “self-evident”. For example, the unalienable right to life, liberty, happiness, equality, security, etc. And Natural Law and its self-evident truths are discernable through the exercise of conscientious Reason.
Thomas Paine, in his introduction to Common Sense (1776), wrote the following:
What Paine was ultimately recognizing was our common humanity. Natural Law and the rights inherent to all people are not the unique possesion of Americans, but are the common property of all mankind. Its concerns are universal. And Americans have no right to deny any human being of their Natural rights.
And so where immigrating people are concerned, their right to life and security must be advocated, and such advocacy, and the laws which advance it, must be based upon human compassion and grace.
As to majority vs. minority where democratic process is concerned, take a lesson from Thomas Jefferson:
Jefferson understood that, just as with law, the will of the majority is not absolute.
So, Michael, before lecturing us any further with your flawed absolutist theories on law and what you promote as its inflexible dictates, go back to the books. Because you clearly have much to learn.
Michael, you stated:
You couldn’t be more wrong.
The issue isn’t “law” as any majority dictates it (please refer to my prior remarks on this subject, directly above), but is ultimately an issue of Natrual Law, and natural rights thereto, inherent to all people.
Such natural rights include the right to be free from oppression. And oppression would include such things as being socially demeaned, deprecated, discriminated against, or treated as inferior, and the inequities leveled upon you as a result (e.g., the adverse effects of the “Rule of Law Resolution” and the activities of its civilian proponents, etc.).
That is why the current problem in PWC is racial intolerance (not “illegal immigration”). And racial intolerance is in absolute contradiction to and violation of the natural rights of the Latino/Hispanic residents in your community.