| Wednesday, 01/09/08 Immigration woes continue Customers are scarce, churches almost empty
By Janell Ross and Eric Miller
Gannett Tennessee and Robertson County Times
A once growing Hispanic population is Springfield is now in sharp decline after immigration raids last month spread fear throughout the city. Some estimate that 1,000 Hispanic residents have fled the city in fear or went into hiding after the raids. Now the effects are witnessed in churches, felt by business owners, and piled up on roadsides.
Jose Linares, 47, an elder of the Iglesia Adventista Del Septimo Dia, says his church has been hit hard by the fear gripping the Hispanic community.
“We have 120 members, but many of them left,” Linares said. “That’s going to have a tremendous impact on our church. We have a mortgage. We have a place to worship and we are paying for it. We don’t have half the members that we used to have.”
The impact on local churches was immediate, according to Rev. Tomas Bielawa, who ministers to the Hispanic congregation at Springfield’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.
On the day of the raid on the fake ID operation, about 200 people attended the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the church, a special date for Mexican Catholics in particular. Last year, the same celebration drew about 450, said Bielawa.
“You have to understand that if you are a Mexican and you only go to church one time a year, this is it, you go that day,” he said.
The sudden decline in the Hispanic population has hurt several businesses, some to the point of closing.
Elias Quijada, the owner of E&D Auto Repair, who is from El Salvador, said he has been forced to look for other work after running his shop for about a year.
“It’s been several days since I’ve gotten clients and that’s why I have to close my shop,” Quijada said in Spanish. “I was starting to have a lot of clients and they’re gone.”
He said he will try to reopen his shop in a few weeks when everything calms down.
“I’ve been a resident since 1985 and I’ve never seen anything as big as this personally,” Quijada said.
As business owners who cater to Hispanics are left reeling, so are those who rent to them.
Springfield landlord James Huffine said he’ll lose $5,000 this month in cleaning, hauling and lost rent after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested members of five families last month who lived in his apartment units. Huffine said his tenants showed him work identification and paycheck stubs issued by Electrolux, Robertson County’s largest employer, and he believed they were here legally.
“I don’t think people ought to be here illegally, but these raids, sweeping up people in the dead of night, it just doesn’t seem right or productive,” he said, motioning to the tangled mess at the edge of the road. “I know a lot of people think we need to get all the illegals out of here, but you’ve got to look at stuff like this. Look at what those raids have done to this entire town.”
The events leading up to ICE’s roundup began on Dec. 5 when a Nashville television station aired a story about Electrolux Home Products. It detailed hiring practices the station said allowed illegal immigrants into the work force.
The Electrolux Springfield plant employs about 3,500 people and produces electric and gas stoves.
In a statement, the company said it depends on a staffing company to identify employees and gather information about their legal right to work in the United States. The staffing company is Randstad, which did not return phone calls seeking comment. Then, typically within weeks, the employee is subjected to a second round of identity checks, according to a statement issued by Tony Evans, an Electrolux spokesman. Evans did not specify when Electrolux began doing that.
But sometime between the Dec. 5 television report and a visit from ICE one week later, the company began reviewing paperwork. As many as 800 workers lost or walked away from Electrolux jobs, said Tommy Vallejos, executive director of HOPE, a Tennessee immigrant advocacy group.
“There are people who are so afraid, they have not collected their final paycheck,” Vallejos said.
Norma Linda, 23, who did not give her last name, was among them. She came to Tennessee illegally nearly five years ago from a farm in Oaxaca, Mexico. For the last three years, she worked on an Electrolux line installing stove components, presenting a Mexican government-issued ID and an expired visa to get the job, she said.
When word spread on the floor that employees were being questioned about their ability to work in the United States, Norma Linda made a decision. When her break time came, she left and never went back.
The ICE arrests began Dec. 12, with two people accused of selling identification to illegal immigrants who primarily used it to get jobs at Electrolux. Agents also arrested 14 suspected illegal immigrants, said Temple Black, a New Orleans-based ICE spokesman.
On Dec. 19, four suspected illegal immigrants were arrested at the Springfield Electrolux facility, and by the end of the day Dec. 20, 11 more were arrested at homes and apartments in and around Springfield.
Since then, fear remains and the full impact on the community has yet to be seen.
However, County Mayor Howard Bradley said the change is already noticeable. He blames faulty immigration policy for allowing the community to build its economy, at least in part, with illegal labor only to have it yanked away.
“There is a noticeable absence, you just do not see many Hispanic people on the street,” he said. “The only thing that isn’t clear at this point is the long-term impact this may have on Robertson County.”
Enforcement may become even more strict this year, when a new state law allows government agencies to report employers suspected of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Those caught twice in three years will lose their business license.
Regardless of what happens, members of the Hispanic community say they aren’t going away.
“We’re here to stay,” Linares, who plans to rebuild his church’s congregation, said. “We are going to keep gathering at the same place, trying to get more members, trying to get ahead of it all.”
|  |   Elias Quijada owns E&D Body shop in Springfield and has been essentially put out of business by ICE raids which has caused all his workers to disappear out of fear of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Quijada's son David, background, has been helping his father. (JOHN PARTIPILO/Gannett Tennessean)  Elias Quijada who is the owner of E&D body shop in Springfield, locks up his store for the day. All of his workers Hispanic workers had disappeared or are in hiding after all the ICE raid in Springfield. Quijada is looking for work because he can't maintain his business. (JOHN PARTIPILO/Gannett Tennessean)
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1 comment:
Erick Miller, if you are brazilian entre em contato comigo.
Sou amigo da Angela de Campinas, remember?
waltsimeon@gmail.com
abraço.
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