‘They had to leave’

Andres Vega said his family left Dalton after House Bill 87 — Georgia’s sweeping immigration law that is one year old today — was enacted last year.

“I’m legal, but I’ve seen other people who have gone through many problems because of the immigration law,” said Vega, a masonry specialist who said he’s been in Dalton almost 12 years. “My family, my brothers, they had to leave from Dalton to California to Mexico. So it affects me in some ways. Also, I have seen a lot of people — not only from Dalton but from other places — leaving to go to Mexico because of the immigration law. They’re scared about it.”

Mariela Cruz is working in Dalton while taking a summer break from political science and pre-law classes at Birmingham-Southern College. She’s seen both sides now after Alabama followed Georgia with an even tougher immigration law.

Cruz said she saw a difference right away when HB 87 was enacted.

“A lot of people have left,” she said. “A lot of my friends have left, a lot of people I knew from church left. Overall, I see the population has decreased in the Hispanic community. We have lost a lot of families who just left ... and I think in the future we’ll continue to see this because it’s not getting any better.”

Cruz admits some of the departures may have been driven by economic vistas that have dimmed.

“It was a combination of both,” she said. “From my personal opinion, I think that all of these immigration laws have emerged because everybody’s just trying to look for a scapegoat to blame the economic downturn on. Everybody needs somebody to blame, and unfortunately, the undocumented community is a very easy target. You can blame everything on them.”

But Cruz, who is “documented in some way,” said the evidence doesn’t bear that view out.

“But you really can’t,” she continued. “The amount of taxes they paid to Social Security — knowing they’re not going to get it back — that’s money to the government. I mean, there’s pros and cons to everything, obviously, but overall I think they contribute. I don’t think it’s true that they do not contribute.”

Cruz added she was “surprised” that she saw no one in Georgia protesting enactment of HB 87.

“I was here when they passed the Georgia law and I was there when they passed the Alabama law, and there were students, young people — white, black, Asian, anything — protesting, and that didn’t happen here (in Georgia),” she pointed out. “Why? That’s the answer I do not have but want to have. That scared me.”

‘No mass exodus’

Father Paul Williams, pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, said before HB 87 became law there was “a lot of uncertainty and fear in the community.”

“That had an impact on everybody just from an anxiety standpoint,” he said. “At St. Joseph’s we did our best to reach out to people and help them understand the law ... we had heard stories of people staying at home, afraid to leave their homes. That was a real fear and a reality that people lived for a few months.”

But he said by August the fear had abated.

“Especially with the revision from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) — the implementation of the law and using discretion when deporting — and when it was clear that that was going to change, that was a big sigh of relief for most people,” he said. “So since then the implementation of the law and its harmful effects in the community have not been as pronounced as (at first). It does not seem to be an issue people were as anxious about as they were when the law was being talked about and passed and signed.”

What about reports of Hispanics leaving the area in the wake of HB 87’s enactment last year?

“We feared the same during the summer, but we looked at our (Sunday) school attendance (that fall) and we grew by about 10 percent,” Williams reported. “We grew from around 1,000 kids to 1,300 ... if there’s one word to describe St. Joseph’s since last year, it’s growth ... from our perspective we’re growing tremendously.”

He said the church has planted one satellite church in Dalton and looks to place another one soon, and the satellite church in Chatsworth is projected to grow from 300 to 1,000 members.

“The congregation is 90 percent Hispanic with over 10,000 active members,” Williams noted of St. Joseph’s. “Our offertory has grown ... (and the) increased level of giving to me means an increased level of comfort in the community. They feel part of St. Joseph’s, but they also feel stable here in Dalton because Dalton is their home. As I’ve said before, the Hispanic community is more firmly rooted in the Dalton-Whitfield area than statistics will tell you. And that’s what I got from last year, that while there was fear and anxiety there was no mass exodus.”

Williams asked rhetorically, “Why?”

“Because they have roots here,” he said. “Either their children are citizens or their children are going to school, they have good work and employment, they have good homes, Dalton is not a high crime area. While there is existent poverty to a worrisome level, there is a broader support of community so the poor are not marginalized to as great an extent as they would be elsewhere.”

Williams believes much of HB 87 was “driven by political rhetoric.”

“That led to fear, but once people saw the reality on the ground — that their kids were still in school, that they still had jobs, they still had their homes — and while the economy is going through what I call attrition, they still feel comfortable enough to live here,” he said. “And that’s a good thing for the community and for all.”

‘No complaints’

Dalton Police Chief Jason Parker said the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Arizona’s immigration law — the court threw out several provisions while approving one that allows authorities to check the immigration status of individuals whose legal right to be in the country may be in question — “does not impact our operations.” Georgia’s law was modeled on Arizona’s.

“As far as concerns about ‘showing your papers,’ our officers do not randomly check immigration status on the side of the road,” Parker pointed out. “We do, however, require identification from criminal suspects, and sometimes verify immigration status during active criminal investigations. (We) work very closely with ICE officials when needed.”

Parker also addressed “racial profiling” concerns.

“There are already federal and state controls over bias-based police actions,” he said. “But professional police agencies go a step further by putting in place sound policy, thorough training and follow-up with good supervision. We have had no complaints from roadside encounters with local citizens since the implementation of HB 87.”

Maj. John Gibson with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office sounded a similar theme.

“We continually try to conduct ourselves as professionally as we can in situations dealing with immigration and illegal aliens because it is such a controversial issue on both sides and we like to try and give everybody the benefit of the doubt — the citizens as well as those who may be here illegally,” Gibson said. “So we try our best to verify all the information and double-check it and confirm it before any action is taken.”

The sheriff’s office still utilizes 287(g), a federal program that helps law enforcement agencies identify persons in the country illegally with criminal records.

“We’ve had a system in place ever since 287(g) was implemented,” Gibson said. “It has been in place for some years now and it works efficiently for us and we have such a good working relationship with ICE that once we have someone we suspect as an illegal alien, they give us the information back really quick, sometimes in the same hour and day that we call — so the information flow between us and ICE works really good. That’s because our officers have worked with them in the past for a length of time now and they’re trained in the ways of communicating back and forth with the federal government.

“We do have a pretty streamlined operation when we deal with suspected illegal aliens, so that aspect of the statute has really not affected us whatsoever.”

The cost of E-Verify

Dalton Mayor David Pennington said when he heard recently of cities in the state not complying with E-Verify — a federal program mandated by HB 87 that requires employers to document their employees’ citizenship status — he immediately called City Hall.

“We’ve been complying with it even before they passed this law — our employees and all our contractors,” Pennington said, adding one reason the city has been in compliance for awhile is funds from the federal government. “We have some federal money that comes through the city for us, like CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) money, and so we’ve been having to conform to this for quite some time,” he explained. “So it wasn’t anything new to us when Georgia passed that law.”

But Pennington said there is a burdensome aspect to HB 87.

“To me, the onerous part of that has to do with small businesses — of which I’m one — depending on the size you are,” he said. “(This) is another regulation on small Georgia businesses that other states don’t have — and we have one of the most difficult small business environments in America, with a lot of regulations that are put on us that other states don’t put on their small businesses. And it shows up in that our small business sector in Georgia is struggling much more than the rest of the nation is.

“Georgia has become a very small business unfriendly state, not just in this but in a lot of other things they make us comply with.”

Pennington was asked how HB 87 has affected Dalton and Whitfield County overall.

“I think we’ve had some instances which have nothing to do with this law that has to do with a Democratic attorney general ruling two years ago or three years ago,” he said. “(Attorney General) Thurbert Baker said that (during) a traffic stop we have to run a driver’s license (to find if that person) is undocumented. More have been taken to jail because of that.”

‘Fruit rotting on vines’

Immigration attorney Dustin Baxter of Kuck Immigration Partners of Atlanta said HB 87 seems to have had more of a negative economic impact in south Georgia.

“There’s been a huge decrease in willing and available workers to harvest the crops,” he began. “We’ve got fruit rotting on the vines, we’ve got all the crops that are being wasted because there aren’t hands to pick them. So I think first and foremost, the people that have felt that are the people that work in farm labor. Up here in the north (part of Georgia) where we’ve got the carpet industry and are starting to get into the furniture industry, I think the economy had already pretty much put a damper on that. And so we saw a lot of people leaving even before HB 87 came into effect or was even talked about. So here in (North Georgia) it’s kind of the argument, ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ The climate was not good economically, but it was also not good for immigrants and so we saw people leaving probably for a combination of both reasons.”

Baxter noted farmers in south Georgia could not depend on the state’s solution to the lack of immigrant workers.

“After HB 87 the farm owners were begging the (state) representatives to please do something to alleviate the problem because they didn’t have enough people to do the jobs that needed to be done,” he said. “They had the program where they tried to get the inmates — to reduce their sentences — go to pick the fruits and vegetables and that didn’t work. (The farm owners) lost a great deal of money.”

Baxter was asked if there was any movement under the Gold Dome during the 2012 legislative session to ease back on HB 87 to assist farmers.

“They kept it in place,” he lamented. “We’re actually part of a group that sued the state of Georgia on the implementation of HB 87. We didn’t focus on E-Verify stuff, because frankly, we think the state has the ability to enact a law that requires people (to show documentation for) E-Verify. That’s not a bone that we pick, we don’t have a dog in that fight. We did sue on the ‘show me your papers’ provisions (and) making certain things crimes (such as seeking employment).”

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