About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2011)
I How Will [HUB Be Felt in Athens? J; , t f 4 Griselda, a 34-year-old salesperson with two children who came to the United States as a teenager to be with her mother, HB 87 seems to affect every moment of her life as an undocumented immigrant. She desperately explains how hard it is for people to understand "waking up every morning and driving 45 minutes to work, not knowing if you are going to make it home to your family" for fear of deportation. She calls her husband to say when she is leaving work, and he cau tions her not to speed; not to take certain roads. Griselda has lived in the United States longer than she did as a youth in Mexico. Her children have never lived anywhere but Georgia. She pays tax on her income at work. For more than 10 years, her mother has paid property tax on a home that she nearly lost when Griselda's stepfather was deported earlier this year. Griselda doesn't know what life would be like in Mexico or where she would begin. She speaks English very well, but says more than once, "I'm still dreaming in Spanish." She has a driver's license. To get it, she drove with several cousins in a van to Washington state, where they could acquire driver's licenses without papers. Turned out their epic journey only got them permits, and they had to make the trip a second time to get the real thing. HB 87 makes Griselda even more worried about her status than she already was. What if she is stopped, and her valid driver's license from Washington is not enough to avoid an inquiry into her immigration status? She keeps her license hidden unless she absolutely has to use it. She is embarrassed that her children have had to learn the necessity of lying to the police. "They know," she says, "even if lying is bad, mom will have to lie to the police and say she is from Washington if the police stop her." Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Thrash blocked two major components of HB 87 that were due to go into effect July 1. The controversial "Arizona-style" immigration law, contains a so-called "show-me-your-papers" pro vision empowering local and state law enforce ment to investigate the immigration status of any person suspected of committing a crime who cannot pro vide identification indicating legal presence within the United States. This and a second provision criminalizing anyone know ingly "transporting" or "harboring" an undocumented person in Georgia were blocked from going into effect, pending the out come of a lawsuit brought by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. The judge's temporary hold on these provisions comes with a temporary sigh of relief for many business owners, farm ers, workers and families living in and around Athens. But it does little to address what immigrants are most worried about. Judge Thrash echoed a concern about the law that's heard repeatedly from those it targets: "The apparent legislative intent is to create such a climate of hostility, fear, mistrust and insecurity that all illegal aliens will leave Georgia." But what does such a climate actually achieve? the way to the J&J Flea Market a week before HB V-JJL JL 87 was due to go into effect, at the Loop 10 exit onto 441 North, a couple of Athens-Clarke County police offi cers were stopping people in their cars. A heavy silence perme ated one old car as the driver pulled over: three of the four passengers lacked papers. But they were waved on. It seemed the officers had been checking for licenses and seatbelts, not impaired driving, early Sunday morning. At the market, news of the police stopping people on the road spread like wildfire among the vendors and customers. No one took the news lightly. As people reached for their phones to warn friends and family, the faces and voices were grave, forlorn, wearied. HB 87's considerable economic impacts on small busi nesses in Athens began before the date it was slated to go into effect. Sammy Espinoza owns Los Amigos, a grocery store off Chase Street. He is among several local Latino business owners who say they have seen about a 30 percent decrease . in business since April, when Governor Nathan Deal signed the bill. Another of Espinoza's businesses, Sammy's Auto Sales, has taken a more considerable hit: sales are down from 12 or 14 cars to three or four per week. Of course, the broader economic situation is at work here, but Espinoza has heard from some customers looking to pay off their outstanding debts, and oth ers who are wary of making purchases because of uncertainties about HB 87. Nearly everyone who does business with the Athens-area Latino community seems to have heard of families who have already left because of the law. Roberto Arteaga, who runs the Jalisco grocery on Jefferson Highway, has heard of numerous people leaving, particularly in the last couple of weeks. The economic downturn has hurt his business, leaving his sales down 50 percent from two years ago—but 25 percent of this driving without a license, and "would do anything to help [her family] get papers," she says. But in the months since HB 87 was passed. Nancy's father has left for the Carolinas to look for work and to explore the possibility of moving the family. If they do leave, Nancy's boss might have to close the chicken house. If the climate continues to become more hostile and insecure, more stable immigrants may begin to leave in greater numbers, and the damage to the agricultural industry in North Georgia could start to follow the trend swimming up from South Georgia. ACC police depend on good communication with the Latino community to keep the city safe, but since the law's pas sage, many in that community have been frightened to make contact with them. Chief Joseph Lumpkin understands HB 87 as he does any number of other statutes his force must incor porate into its work. For Lumpkin, HB 87 does not necessitate any additional training beyond standard shift briefings, nor does it allow the police to set up immigration checkpoints, or in any way to target specifically any ethnicity. If the HB 87 provisions Judge Thrash has temporarily blocked eventually do go into effect. Lumpkin says the ACC police department will follow the statute "how it is written into law." At the same time, Lumpkin explains, "we are going to continue to stress to our officers tc enforce the law within the constitution of the State of Georgia and the United States, as well as the case law and statu tory law of those governments... We have never oeen a carry-your-papers country." But, while the reassurance that the ACCPD will not set up checkpoints may be welcomed, it can be of little comfort to someone like Griselda, who carries a driver's license like a tal isman and a curse—who understands HB 87 to mean, no matter how much she tries to do right, "they don't want us here." At A young protester is arrested after stopping traffic at a demonstration outside the state Capitol June 28. drop-off has come in the last month alone. The owner of the Chavita grocery on Oneta Street said recently that his business is down by half, and that the day before, four families had come to tell him they were leaving for Texas. "As we get closer to the law [going into effect]," says the owner of a salon at the flea market, "there are fewer and fewer customers." According to the intentions Judge Thrash surmised, the law is working even without going into effect: undocumented people are leaving. But only some of them. It doesn't seem to be the people who have moved away that have hurt business the most, but rather the fact that people are afraid to leave their houses: that they are staying home and saving their money in case of an emergency that could break up a family. The manager of the Pendergrass Flea Market explains the situation clearly: "Right now, people are highly concerned about families being split." He says that there are two types of undocumented immigrants. On the one hand, there are "people who are transient workers: temporary." These people are choos ing to live elsewhere, and it's having a drastic effect on the labor force in South Georgia. "On the other hand," he explains, "there are families, who are stable, with children, who have built their lives here." These families are going to stay to see what happens. Demoralization of these families—by creating a climate of fear, mistrust and insecurity—is the primary way in which the law is "working" as intended. The effects of this demoralization and uncertainty among immigrant families with longer-standing ties and stable work may remain to be seen. A young woman named Nancy cuts hair in a salon on the weekends, but during the week she works at a chicken house in Commerce with her family. The owner of the chicken house once "bonded out" Nancy's father for the state Capitol Tuesday, June 28, amid shouts of "Undocumented, unafraid!" and "They say 'go back,' we say 'fight back!'" several undocumented young people from Athens were center-stage in a protest against HB 87. Ambitious for Equal Rights—a group that began at Cedar Shoals High School—joined the call led by the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance for greater access to education for people who come to this country as children and grow up here, no matter what their official immigration sta tus. The rally began with six undocumented youths, who were brought to the United States between the ages of two and 10, speaking about the barriers to education they face. More than 200 people rallied outside the Capitol after the speeches, then marched through downtown Atlanta and the Georgia State campus. When the march circled back to the Capitol, the six speakers, still wearing graduation gowns, blocked an intersec tion with a banner reading "We will no longer remain in the shadows." Though hundreds of people were blocking the inter section with them, the six students wearing gowns and sitting on the banner were the only ones arrested and removed by the police. Leeidy Solis, an undocumented 16-year-old from Athens, was among those risking deportation to make her voice heard. "My mom was really, really nervous; she couldn't eat, couldn't sleep," she said after being released. "I've been risking getting deported since I got here, so why be scared now?" When asked how she felt preparing to take the risks of making such a pub lic stand, Solis explained, "I've been... 'out' as undocumented. It doesn't really change nothing—I've been here, and I'm going to be here. I wasn't scared at all. I felt powerful... I'm here, and I'm fighting for my people." If the legislative intention of laws like HB 87 is to instill fear and insecurity among undocumented Latinos in the United States, then perhaps the courage of young people like Leeidy Solis is evidence that not everybody is intimidated. Richard Milligan JULY 6, 2011-FLAGPOLE.COM 7
