This is an interesting article about Gainesville, Georgia. It's just 30 minutes south of here - where we had our first house and where all three of the boys were born. I don't care for the way they make the interviewed people sound, but the story is very true. Even the subdivision that we lived in has been run down to a condition that I would never consider living in now, for example, the entrance sign for the subdivision is missing and graffiti is painted in its place, there were weeds growing in most of the yards, and our house is now a neon color!
Small-Town Resistance Helped to Seal Defeat
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 29, 2007; A01
GAINESVILLE, Ga. -- Stephanie Usrey strode up to her local Wal-Mart
store the other morning with the steely look of a boxer about to step into
the ring.
A stay-at-home mother of two, Usrey has dreaded shopping at this particular
branch ever since a Friday afternoon about five years ago, when she said she
suddenly noticed she was the only non-Latino customer.
"That was the first time I looked around and said, 'Man, I didn't realize
how many Mexicans there were here,' " Usrey, 39, recalled. "And they don't
seem to feel any discomfort when they're, like, six inches from your face
and talking to each other in their language, either. I just felt very
encroached upon. . . . It was like an instant feeling of 'I'm in the
minority, and if we don't get control over this, pretty soon all of America
will be outnumbered. ' "
That sense of alarm, echoed in communities across the nation, helped seal
defeat for the Senate immigration bill Thursday. Fueled by talk-radio hosts
and Web sites, Usrey and tens of thousands of other first-time activists
bombarded their senators with phone calls and e-mails decrying the bill as
an unacceptable amnesty for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal
immigrants.
Nowhere were the bill's opponents more influential than here in
Georgia ,
whose two Republican senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby
Chambliss ,
originally helped craft the legislation. Two days after its unveiling in
May, Chambliss was booed at his state's
Republican convention. Isakson's
office received more than 21,000 calls from opponents of the bill, compared
with 6,000 from supporters.
Thursday, both Georgia senators voted to kill the bill they once supported.
Analysts say the unprecedented passion over immigration is largely the
result of the seismic shift in settlement patterns since the mid-1990s --
when the expanding economy prompted a surge of immigrants to bypass longtime
gateway states such as
California,
New York and
Texas, in favor of suburban and rural regions of the South and
Midwest. Within a
decade, the foreign-born population of 25 states doubled. In six other
states with almost no prior experience of Latino immigration, including
Georgia, the Latino population more than tripled.
"I think this new pattern of immigration is what's really pushing the
politics of this," said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings
Institution
. "Before, people outside the seven gateway states didn't care much one way
or the other about immigration. Now, you suddenly have all these people
across
Middle America seeing immigrants in their neighborhoods. "
Gainesville, an area of about 102,000 set along a lake in the foothills of
the Blue Ridge Mountains, is solid Bush territory.
Even now, many locals speak of the president's
support of the Senate bill the way one would of a beloved son who has
momentarily strayed but is sure to come to his senses.
This is still a place where men take their sons deer hunting and moms call
out to one another in the supermarket in cheerful Southern drawls. And
although the highways leading out of the city have been colonized by the
usual sprawl of Home Depot, PetSmart and OfficeMax
big-box stores, downtown
Gainesville retains a tranquil, small-town feel.
Colonnaded white mansions line one of the major avenues. Clothing boutiques
and cafes ring a landscaped central square with a monument dedicated to "Our
Confederate Soldiers."
A few feet away, in almost as prominent a spot, stands a statue of a rooster
-- a testament to local pride in the chicken processing plants that have
given the region its identity as "poultry capital of the world" since the
1950s.
But those poultry plants are arguably most responsible for the wave of
immigration transforming
Gainesville. For years the plants, which include
Mar-Jac, Pilgrim's Pride and Tysons, among many others, employed mostly
African Americans to do the grueling work at the heart of poultry
processing. Then, in the early 1980s, a growth of other industries opened up
less-taxing jobs.
The poultry plants responded to the resulting labor shortage by welcoming
workers from Mexico. Today,
Hall County , of which
Gainesville is the county seat, is more than 25 percent Latino,
including both legal and illegal immigrants.
Max Crawford, 54, a plant production manager, estimates that 90 percent of
the workers he supervises are Latino immigrants. Crawford, who asked that
his company not be named because he is not authorized to speak for it, said
he admires how hard Latinos work. But he is also unsettled by many of their
customs, such as a tendency to throw toilet paper in the trash rather than
in the toilet -- a common practice in areas of
Latin America where commodes do not flush with sufficient force to handle paper.
"I mean, we actually had to show them a video explaining how you're supposed
to put the toilet paper in the toilet," he said.
Crawford's friend Larry Davies, 54, shook his head in amazement.
The two were seated at one of the wooden tables at the Longstreet Cafe, the
remnants of a fried chicken lunch on their plates. On one of the beige walls
behind them hung a television monitor broadcasting the
Fox News Channel . On another hung black-and-white photos of town landmarks destroyed by a
tornado in 1936: a white-washed church; the old City Hall.
The packed restaurant seemed almost as much of a relic. It is one of the few
gathering spots left in
Gainesville where nearly every face is white.
Drive along the industrial strip just south of town, and you could almost be
in Mexico .
Pastel-colored signs identify the Tres Amigos launderette, the Flor de
Jalisco grocery, the Mejor de Michoacan ice cream shop, the Casa Blanca
party hall and the Iglesia Adventista del Septimo Dia.
The immigrant presence is just as noticeable in local schools. Some are as
much as 70 percent Latino.
Perhaps most alarming to Crawford, however, has been the rise of Latino
gangs -- not enough to cause a major spike in crime statistics but enough to
keep police busy painting over graffiti on the medians and sound barriers
along some roadways.
Crawford and Davies have been best buddies since their days at Gainesville
High School, and there was a time when they mused that their children might
go there as well.
"But not the way it is now," said Crawford, whose youngest daughter just
completed her junior year at a county high school outside of
Gainesville.
The restaurant's owner, Tim Bunch, 50, walked by and gave a friendly wave.
Like several of his customers, Bunch is less concerned by the arrival of
illegal immigrants to
Gainesville than by the local reaction to them.
"Most of [the Mexicans] don't want to come here. They just need to eat," he
said later. "I think we're all God's children, created in his image. . . .
And I would hope hearts don't grow to a point where they are so hardened
about another human being."
Still, the dominant theme of conversation around the tables was of a town
being inexorably deteriorated by illegal immigration.
Martha Hemphill, 67, a retired hospital administrator, talked about how she
is afraid to go to the malls after 8 p.m.
Charles Slay, 73, described how, on a recent visit to the emergency room at
the city's main medical center, he was incensed to find it filled with
Mexicans, whom he presumed were seeking non-emergency care because they
lacked health insurance.
"You should've seen how I had to holler to get the nurse's attention," he
said.
Uraina Smith, 61, and her husband, Billy Ray Smith, 66, said they were
forced to sell their home in a pretty subdivision of Colonial and ranch
houses called Willow Ridge because it was "taken over" by Mexicans who
parked on the grass, jumped into the communal pool in their jeans shorts and
crammed multiple families into the same house.
"It used to be a real nice area. Now it's a slum," said Billy Ray, with a
sigh.
Although their complaints were not new, until recently few had done more
than gripe to one another. Most said they were unaware when Congress
considered a similar legalization plan last year. But this time around, the
television and talk-radio personalities many favor here --
Bill O'Reilly,
Sean Hannity and
Gainesville' s own Martha Zoller -- have put the issue on the front
burner.
Crawford said he decided to get in touch with his senators because,
"Everyone was saying you need to let them know how you feel about this right
now."
