< Previous page

Claims of exploitation are also becoming more common. Clavijo has begun hearing frequently from undocumented laborers who say they are picked up at day labor sites, given a few days' work, then threatened with immigration arrest and never paid.

A threat is perceived

Among non-immigrants, there is a pervasive sense that immigrants are no longer a benign source of cheap labor. Many say they now see immigrants as a threat to the nation's health-care and education systems, as well as to culture and language. According to a poll conducted this summer in the Charlotte region, more than half of North Carolinians oppose efforts to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens -- the highest percentage ever.

Some people admit that their concern is not just with illegal immigrants but with the increasing presence of Hispanics. According to the U.S. Census, there were 380,000 Hispanics in North Carolina in 2000. There are now about 600,000, about half of them thought to be in the country illegally.

Nelson Brewer of Siler City said he is among many town natives who are distressed about Hispanic people who have moved in to work in meatpacking plants.

Brewer, 52, who works for a trucking company, said he blames illegal immigrants for school crowding and rising taxes. And he said he resents that seemingly all the employees in local restaurants now speak Spanish.

He said he considers even legal immigrants, if they speak Spanish and bring foreign customs, to be intruders. But he said he sees little hope of the trend reversing.

"I guess it's like the blacks years ago," Brewer said. "You didn't like them, but you learn to live with them."

Many others expressed more moderate and guarded views.

On a recent afternoon in downtown Wendell, the mention of the word "immigration" sparked complaints about illegal immigrants who crowd hospitals and don't pay for services, Spanish-speaking children who hurt the quality of local schools and undocumented laborers suspected of not paying taxes. Almost none of those who talked with a reporter wanted their names used in the newspaper.

Fran Duncan, an Arizona resident who was visiting her grandchildren in Cary, shared the sentiments of several others who wouldn't give their names.

"I think they have really learned how to take advantage of every free thing that is offered," Duncan said of illegal immigrants. "I'd probably do the same thing if I were poor and destitute. But when you think about the health-care problems in this country, it makes you really irritated."

Matt Sirois, a Wendell restaurant manager, said he thinks that immigrants are necessary to the American economy and that many complaints about them are rooted in prejudice. But even he said he was tired of the United States "bowing down" to people who can't speak English.

Sirois, who runs the Gallery Cafe, said he is irked by signs and phone messages translated into Spanish. "If you're going to live here," Sirois said, "you should learn English."

Cultural fear

David Coates, a professor of Anglo-American studies at Wake Forest University, said several factors have intensified public concern over immigration. The Sept. 11 attacks created fear that foreigners mean harm. And changes in immigration law made Mexicans the first wave of immigrants who had to sneak over the border illegally, he said, giving them a stain of criminality.

Researchers predict that in a decade or two, minorities will outnumber whites in the United States -- prompting worry that American culture will give way to a balkanized state with no national language, Coates said.

"It's not so much a racial hatred as a cultural fear that we'll end up with a Spanish separatist population," Coates said.

Even teens say they are feeling the reverberations of that fear.

Maria Hernandez, a senior at Broughton High School, and Salvador Lopez, who graduated last year from Wakefield High School, say their classmates often assume they are illegal immigrants, despite their U.S. citizenship. Both said they have seen incidents in the past few months in which Hispanic students were taunted with shouts that immigration control officers were coming.

But the teens said they still speak Spanish with pride, and they said most of their peers shun people who make negative comments about immigrants.

"You shouldn't let it offend you," Lopez said of the occasional slights, "because it's just people who don't have class."

< Previous page