Guest Column
Hispanic people feel new hostility
By Kristin Collins
Miguel Munoz was standing in a drug store parking lot having a conversation in Spanish when a pickup pulled up beside him. The driver shouted curses, shook his fist and called Munoz an "illegal alien."
"He said, 'When you come to my country, you need to speak English,' " said Munoz, a Durham lawyer who immigrated legally from Mexico 17 years ago.
In that parking lot, Munoz said, he realized for the first time that some people see him as an invader in the place he calls home.
As furor over immigration rises across the nation, many Hispanics say they are increasingly the targets of hostility in a state where they once felt welcome.
Some commentators and politicians concerned about illegal immigration routinely associate illegal immigrants with violence, disease and dependence on public resources. Immigrants and their advocates say the prevalence of such ideas has changed the way many Americans view Hispanic immigrants -- legal or illegal.
Discrimination complaints are increasing, and some Hispanic nonprofits are struggling to maintain their funding as major benefactors become more cautious about Hispanic causes. Hispanics say they feel that even public officials and law enforcement officers are inclined to see them in a negative light or treat them poorly.
This month, a state Highway Patrol trooper resigned after he was accused of abducting Hispanic women and making sexual advances toward them. One woman said he threatened her husband with immigration arrest. In May, it was revealed that a federal, Raleigh-based Drug Enforcement Administration agent humiliated a Hispanic suspect, who was a legal immigrant, by forcing him to pose for a picture wearing a sombrero and holding a Mexican flag.
Munoz, the lawyer, said he got no response from police when he reported being harassed in the parking lot. He said an officer told him the man's actions were not a crime.
"I was shaking that night," said Munoz, 41. "I have children who look Hispanic. I was afraid for what can happen to them."
Assumptions change
Ivan Parra, an immigrant from Colombia who heads the N.C. Latino Coalition in Durham, said he has watched stereotypes of Hispanics take a bad turn.
"A few years ago, there was the general idea that these folks are hardworking, they contribute to the economy, they go to church," Parra said.
Now, he said, the stereotype is of people who skirt taxes or belong to gangs. Parra said he does not deny that some immigrants commit crimes or cheat the system, but he said the actions of a few are beginning to color the perception of an entire group.
Marco Guerra, 48, a Raleigh auto mechanic who immigrated legally from Chile, said he was eating at a restaurant bar a few weeks ago when a man sat next to him.
"Right up front, he asked me, 'Are you a wetback?' " Guerra said.
A few weeks earlier, Guerra said, he walked into a public restroom. A young boy who was inside screamed, "Daddy, it's a Mexican, it's a Mexican," Guerra said.
"People look at me, and they just assume that I'm illegal," said Guerra, a U.S. citizen who left Chile in 1981.
Guerra said he has always suspected that people made assumptions about him because of his brown skin and accented English. Now, he said, people are giving voice to their assumptions.
Leonor Clavijo, a spokesperson for El Centro Hispano in Durham, said discrimination complaints used to be rare. Now, her group gets about one a week. She said she hears stories of disputes between neighbors -- about the placement of trash cans or other mundane issues – that escalate into anti-immigrant slurs.
Claims of exploitation are also becoming more common. Clavijo has begun hearing frequently from undocumented laborers who say they are picked up at day labor sites, given a few days' work, then threatened with immigration arrest and never paid.
A threat is perceived
Among non-immigrants, there is a pervasive sense that immigrants are no longer a benign source of cheap labor. Many say they now see immigrants as a threat to the nation's health-care and education systems, as well as to culture and language. According to a poll conducted this summer in the Charlotte region, more than half of North Carolinians oppose efforts to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens -- the highest percentage ever.
Some people admit that their concern is not just with illegal immigrants but with the increasing presence of Hispanics. According to the U.S. Census, there were 380,000 Hispanics in North Carolina in 2000. There are now about 600,000, about half of them thought to be in the country illegally.
Nelson Brewer of Siler City said he is among many town natives who are distressed about Hispanic people who have moved in to work in meatpacking plants.
Brewer, 52, who works for a trucking company, said he blames illegal immigrants for school crowding and rising taxes. And he said he resents that seemingly all the employees in local restaurants now speak Spanish.
He said he considers even legal immigrants, if they speak Spanish and bring foreign customs, to be intruders. But he said he sees little hope of the trend reversing.
"I guess it's like the blacks years ago," Brewer said. "You didn't like them, but you learn to live with them."
Many others expressed more moderate and guarded views.
On a recent afternoon in downtown Wendell, the mention of the word "immigration" sparked complaints about illegal immigrants who crowd hospitals and don't pay for services, Spanish-speaking children who hurt the quality of local schools and undocumented laborers suspected of not paying taxes. Almost none of those who talked with a reporter wanted their names used in the newspaper.
Fran Duncan, an Arizona resident who was visiting her grandchildren in Cary, shared the sentiments of several others who wouldn't give their names.
"I think they have really learned how to take advantage of every free thing that is offered," Duncan said of illegal immigrants. "I'd probably do the same thing if I were poor and destitute. But when you think about the health-care problems in this country, it makes you really irritated."
Matt Sirois, a Wendell restaurant manager, said he thinks that immigrants are necessary to the American economy and that many complaints about them are rooted in prejudice. But even he said he was tired of the United States "bowing down" to people who can't speak English.
Sirois, who runs the Gallery Cafe, said he is irked by signs and phone messages translated into Spanish. "If you're going to live here," Sirois said, "you should learn English."
Cultural fear
David Coates, a professor of Anglo-American studies at Wake Forest University, said several factors have intensified public concern over immigration. The Sept. 11 attacks created fear that foreigners mean harm. And changes in immigration law made Mexicans the first wave of immigrants who had to sneak over the border illegally, he said, giving them a stain of criminality.
Researchers predict that in a decade or two, minorities will outnumber whites in the United States -- prompting worry that American culture will give way to a balkanized state with no national language, Coates said.
"It's not so much a racial hatred as a cultural fear that we'll end up with a Spanish separatist population," Coates said. Even teens say they are feeling the reverberations of that fear.
Maria Hernandez, a senior at Broughton High School, and Salvador Lopez, who graduated last year from Wakefield High School, say their classmates often assume they are illegal immigrants, despite their U.S. citizenship. Both said they have seen incidents in the past few months in which Hispanic students were taunted with shouts that immigration control officers were coming.
But the teens said they still speak Spanish with pride, and they said most of their peers shun people who make negative comments about immigrants.
"You shouldn't let it offend you," Lopez said of the occasional slights, "because it's just people who don't have class."
kcollins@newsobserv er.com or (919) 829-4881
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