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CITY PA GES
l QUE PROBLEMA ?
ACC Commissioners are concerned
about Athens 9 growing migrant
working class. Do they really have
something to worry about?
On weekend afternoons in the Garnett
Ridge community ir North Athens, the
streets are filled with tne sounds of salsa
music and men speaking Spanish.
Sitting in lawn chairs and on sofas, the
men hold court in their front yards, drinking
beer and watching another day take its slow
turn. They sing aiong with songs of a foreign
land, far from homes they left thousands of
miles behind.
The Hispanic men and women living in
Garnett Ridge and surrounding neighbor
hoods in North Athens are part of the fastest
growing demographic group in Athens-Clarke
County. They are the new blood, the new
labor.
The most recent official figures show the
number of Hispanics in this county had
grown to 2,315 by 1996, a 55.3 percent
growth from 1990, more than all other races
in Athens-Clarke County combined, accord
ing to figures from the Department of
Housing and Consumer Economics at the
University of Georgia.
As a percentage of the total population
during that time period, Hispanics here
gained more ground than in any of the five
surrounding counties.
And those numbers don’t fully convey the
volume of the immigration. Because the new
Hispanic population tends to move around
frequently and includes many who are
undocumented by government agencies, an
accurate headcount is nearly impossible by
conventional means.
The offices of Catholic Social Services, the
most established service provider for
Hispanics here, handled more than 5,000
clients last year, of
which roughly 85 to
90 percent were from
Athens-Clarke
County. Margaret
Bell, CSS director,
estimates there are
anywhere from 6,000
tQ 10,000 Hispanics
living in Athens-
Clarke County.
The increasing
swell of immigrant
workers is some
thing everybody
should be concerned
about, said Athens-
Clarke County
Commissioner John
Barrow, who has
voiced concern that Athens is becoming a
haven for “lower rung" jobs.
“When you swamp the labor market with
people who are willing to do more for less
you depress wages,” Barrow said. “The com
munity is not better off by creating an over
supply of under-skilled labor."
Barrow said the danger in Athens is that
as more upscale apartments are built, the
lower end apartment complexes, formerly
rented by students, will be occupied by more
working class tenants. If nothing is done, the
older apartments will turn Athens into a vac
uum for “cheap" labor, Barrow said.
“1 spent four hours at Gold Kist Poultry
the other day, and their human resources
people don’t see any indication that the flow
of Hispanics will reverse,” said Doc Eldridge,
an Athens-Clarke County commissioner and
Athens mayoral can
didate. “We don’t
need to try and
become more attrac
tive to the minimum
wage type worker —
we just don’t need to
build more business
es that’ll bring in
that typr of worker."
Eldridge said he
agreed with Barrow
about the housing
issue and said he
fears the advent of
“privately owned
public housing” in
Athens-Clarke
County.
Despite whatever
political ramifications the trend may have,
it’s not one that’s stopping anytime soon,
Bell said
Hispanic buying power statewide leapt
from $1.3 billion in 1990 to $2.7 billion in
1997, according to Jeffrey Humphreys, direc
tor of economic forecasting for the
University’s Terry College of Business. That
places Georgia’s Hispanic market as the
fourth fastest growing one in the nation.
“For the past three years the population
has gotten away like wildfire,” Bell said.
“Everything went wild."
MINIMUM WAGE GOLD RUSH
The flames Bell referred to are fueled pri
marily by one thing — economics. Mexico hit
a deep recession in late 1994, the worst it has
experienced in more than 60 years. Since
then, the number of Mexican immigrants
here has escalated.
Earlier in the decade, Hispanics coming
into Athens were usually from Central
American countries like El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua. When the wars
there subsided, the influx of Central
American immigrants seeking refuge less
ened substantially. But as the people of
Mexico suffered more economic violence,
many considered moving across the border.
As is true with any immigrant population,
Mexicans have a community network where
word of mouth directs those new to the
country to places where jobs are bountiful.
The unemployment rate for Athens-Clarke
County currently hovers around 3.3 percent,
compared with 4.4 percent statewide and 4.7
percent nationally And so in cities across
Mexico and bus stations along the border,
Athens is known as a promising stop along
the American circuit of prosperity.
“What they make in Mexico in one week,
we make in a day,” said Sandra Ortia, a native
of Reynoso, Mexico, who moved here from
San Antonio two and a half years ago with her
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