Angry at what some believe is federal inaction in policing borders, states and localities are adopting a slew of laws that deny services to undocumented residents, prompt police to act as Immigration. Customs Enforcement agents, penalize employers who hire them and make English the “official” language. In a creepy Stalinist twist, Arizona actively encourages ordinary citizens to report any businesses that employ suspicious, foreign-looking characters.
Individuals of Hispanic backgrounds bear the brunt of this xenophobia since they are thought to be the biggest violators. Supposedly, some 12 million undocumented immigrants, most presumably Latino, have so far invaded the sanctity of the United States.
In my home state of Virginia, the General Assembly, in its annual winter session, is considering more than 100 bills to somehow address the “illegal” immigrant problem. A slew of counties and cities have bounded together to discuss the issues in ways reminiscent of the White Citizens’ Councils that fought desegregation 50 years ago. One county, Prince William, a largely White bedroom suburb of Washington, D.C., received national media attention last summer when it adopted a number of anti-immigrant laws.
Not long ago, an item in a local newspaper in my home county of Chesterfield caught my attention. The then-Republican Board of Supervisors had ordered the county to come up with an estimate of how much “illegals” were costing the county in services.
County officials estimated the number at about $2.1 million but never said how many undocumented foreigners were actually here. That seemed an odd number since mostly White Chesterfield has a population of about 300,000 and doesn’t have many foreigners.
Being a journalist, I started to make inquiries. My first stop was the county’s public information officer, who said that the estimate was rather loosely based and anecdotal. I also contacted the assistant county administrator who directed the study and asked why they never said how many undocumented immigrants were actually in the county. She said the estimate was from 17,500 to 21,000, but it was flimsy so they didn’t make it public.
She admitted that the study considered only Hispanic immigrants, which seems odd because in Virginia, more immigrants come from Asian countries such as India, China and Vietnam than Latin America. From the start, the study seemed biased against Hispanics.
