Illegal immigration, from another perspective [View All]

[pnwmom]

Among the members of my extended family is a single black father living in a small town in a larger urban area. He owns a tiny but well kept older home on a large lot in an integrated riverfront neighborhood and, until a couple years ago, he and his family were very happy there. They have a number of very close friends living on both sides and across the street, who have greatly enriched their lives. But now he says that his block is being “overrun” and “ruined” by illegal Mexican immigrants.

Rather than jumping to the conclusion that he’d suddenly turned racist on me, I started listening to what he had to say. The small apartment building across the street, like many others in the neighborhood, is jammed with immigrants – 10-15 in a one-bedroom apartment. Because there aren’t enough bathrooms, the men go outside in the morning and line up next to the building to urinate.

Recently, my relative has had to kick sleeping drunks out of his front yard, and groups of men drinking beer and using his yard for a bathroom, and couples having sex. The problem is being worsened by a store on the block that’s owned by a legal immigrant who sells beer and liquor to anyone – no I.D.’s necessary. No complaints to the city have had any affect.

The owners of the rental buildings are all absentee – living in the more upscale cities of the state. They don’t care about what’s happening, as long as they get the rent checks. The city isn’t bothering to enforce its own building codes. Meanwhile, developers are chomping at the bit to come in and “clean up” the area.

Down the road, that’s probably exactly what will happen. Instead of enforcing the building codes and other laws that are on the books – that should be protecting this neighborhood -- the city and the developers will get together and, using the laws of eminent domain, declare that the area is blighted. Then they’ll force my relative to sell at whatever price they want to offer him. And maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll be able to afford a little condo somewhere else. But he and the other families that had worked so hard to make their neighborhood a "home" will have to scatter.

It’s easy to be a liberal about immigration from our comfortable surburban neighborhoods, or our safe city apartments, or college dorms. It’s not so easy for everyone.