A Midwestern Mosaic: Immigration and Political Socialization in Rural America

6. What Happened to My Town?

6 What Happened to My Town? Many opponents of immigration are old stock Americans who have all but forgotten their immigrant ancestors. They often live in small towns . . . and have relatively little contact with immigrant families in their neighborhoods, churches, and friendship networks. —Charles Hirschman I n the 2008–2009 academic year, first-, second-, and third-generation immigrant students from around the world together made up a majority of the student body at Storm Lake High School. Forty-one percent of the students were non-Hispanic White. For many Americans, this is exactly the future they do not want to see: small communities taken over by immigrants and their children. Charles Hirschman’s statement likely fits well with most people’s notions of small-town America. We are unsurprised to read a newspaper story such as the Chicago Tribune piece from 2008 about “a sense of unrest familiar in small towns and suburbs across America,” where the integration of immigrants “into small-town America is marked . . . by a language of fear, resentment and anger.”1 This book has demonstrated that these characterizations of small-town America are not borne out in reality, particularly when we examine the process of adaptation over time. The initial wave of immigration brought fear and resentment, but these feelings dissipated over a relatively short period of time. Throughout history, the most virulent anti-immigration rhetoric in the United States has played on the fears many Americans have about outsiders. These fears are supposedly most pronounced in small towns, where change happens more slowly. White residents of ethnically homogeneous communities like those examined here tend to have many reservations about the impact immigrants will have on their communities, especially during the initial period of diversification or in anticipation of immigration. This chapter examines whether the major concerns people had about immigration in small towns have been realized in Perry and Storm Lake. Where do these communities stand today? What are the lessons other homogeneous small towns (and even suburbs and urban neighborhoods) can learn about immigration and rapid demographic change? 116 Chapter 6 Small Towns and the Immigration Debate In American politics, there are few more hot-button contemporary political issues than immigration. If one watches the cable news networks, listens to talk radio, or reads political blogs, one would think that everyone in the United States has a strong opinion about immigration reform. A recent study finds that 70 percent of the episodes of Lou Dobbs Tonight in 2007 contained discussion of illegal immigration, as did 56 percent of The O’Reilly Factor and 28 percent of Glenn Beck.2 In April 2010, the issue shot again to the top of the nation’s agenda when Arizona passed a controversial law that makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and gives police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.3 Under the law, state residents can sue the local government if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced. Officials in Arizona argued that because federal immigration policy is failing to curb illegal immigration, states and localities must act to protect their citizens. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the law’s most controversial provisions, and as of this writing the future of the law is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the law put immigration policy back on the national agenda. Arizona is not alone. In June 2011, Alabama passed the nation’s new “toughest” anti-immigration bill. The law has many similarities to its Arizona predecessor, but among other provisions, it also requires public school officials to ascertain whether students are in the country without documentation and to report annual tallies to state education officials. Further, in the first quarter of 2011, state legislatures introduced 1,538 bills and resolutions related to immigration reform.4 Only 9 percent of these became law, and not all of these laws were anti-immigrant. But many of them give law enforcement and other state agencies broader power to enforce federal law, prohibit landlords from renting to anyone who cannot provide documentation of his or her legal status, and punish employers—and in some cases, those seeking work—who do not verify the status of their employees. In addition to new state laws, hundreds of local ordinances have passed since 2005 seeking to make life more difficult for undocumented immigrants. In Farmers Branch, Texas (pop. 26,000), ordinances were passed in 2006...