The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State

INTRODUCTION: Mapping the Issues at the Heart of Change in North Carolina and the Southeast

Introduction mapping the issues at the heart of change in north carolina and the southeast April 20, 2006, was a bad day to go out to dinner for anyone living in the North Carolina cities of Burlington, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Columbia, Durham, Huntersville, Lenoir, Lumberton, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Winston-­ Salem. Across the state, restaurants closed down, their kitchens empty of dishwashers, cooks, and cleaners. Hotels operated on reduced staff, and trash accumulated uncollected at office buildings. On construction sites, machinery fell silent, while agricultural labor vanished on farms throughout the state. In poultry-­ and hog-­ slaughtering factories, meat lay untouched. Factories lost staff. Latinos, the backbone of North Carolina’s economy, had stopped working for the day. On April 20, Latinos in North Carolina took a break from their jobs in order to join thousands of people gathered in solidarity in the largest organized march of Latinos in the history of the state. In Charlotte, Mexican restaurants closed, and almost four hundred students walked out of public schools. In Raleigh, three thousand people gathered at the capital to support Latinos. In Lumberton, employees of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork-­ processing plant in the United States, marched miles to a rally.1 The purpose of the rallies, which took place across the nation, was to show support for comprehensive immigration reform being considered in Congress. Reform was critical because a number of factors (including backlogs that delayed visa applications by years in some cases) made it increasingly difficult and even impossible for millions of Latin Americans to go through legal channels in order to come to the United introduction 2 States. The current immigration system had not been comprehensively reformed in two decades. Strategies for reform were fiercely contested in the U.S. House and Senate, however, and lawmakers battled over many different versions of the legislation, which included provisions such as fortifying the border and an earned legalization for eligible undocumented immigrants. One version of legislation proposed in the U.S. House was called the “Secure America Act” and would have made it a felony to enter the United States without legal documentation. If passed, this act would have made thousands of Latino residents in North Carolina felons.2 Over the next month, nationwide demonstrations continued as the 109th Congress debated and produced revised versions of the bill. An estimated 1.1 million people in cities across the country rallied again on May 1 to continue supporting reforms and to commemorate Mexican workers’ Labor Day. However, after more than a year of debate, the federal government could not come to a consensus, and comprehensive immigration reform died at the end of the 109th Congress in January 2007. Lawmakers had failed to create a plan to deal with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United State. The failure of comprehensive immigration reform led the nation into a new era in which state and local jurisdictions would increasingly take over the immigration responsibilities of the federal government. In addition to being a day of protest and solidarity, April 20, 2006, was significant for Latinos in North Carolina because their presence— ​ more than half a million people— ​ was noted by the larger public. In Siler City, Chatham County, residents sitting on their front porches watched streams of people marching to the county courthouse to unite with thousands of other people. They saw Latina mothers pushing baby carriages with little U.S. and Mexican flags taped to the handles. They observed people waving banners reading “Si se puede” (We shall overcome ) and “No somos terroristas” (We are not terrorists). They saw hundreds of U.S.-­ born Latino teenagers who had walked out of school that day, wearing handmade T-­ shirts and running through the crowds singing protest songs. They saw students from the university in Chapel Hill who had dressed in white, skipped classes, and carpooled to the rally to show support. 3  introduction The mobilization of thousands of Latinos in the spring of 2006 affirmed the presence of new migrants in the state. For many North Carolinians observing these rallies, the fact that the state’s Latino population had grown faster than in any state in the nation from 1990 to 2000, or that North Carolina has more agricultural guest workers than any other state, might have been a surprise. The places in which most Latinos work— ​ in the back kitchens of restaurants, during night cleaning shifts in...