Warsaw-based Zimmer Biomet is located about 29 miles west of Columbia City. They also have a plant in Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria, Zimmer asked some of their Puerto Rican employees if they would relocate to plants in the continental U.S., like the one in Warsaw.
Local officials helped welcome the new residents but Columbia City Mayor Ryan Daniel had some concerns. When he heard the news, he worried about housing and whether the new residents would feel welcomed.
On the adults’ end, Rivas said, it’s not that they don’t want to learn English, but rather that classes don’t line up with their work schedules and family obligations. In a lot of cases, Rivas said, the adults know some English, but hesitate to use it in formal situations out of fear of being judged or misunderstood.
The discussions also showed a perception among Anglos that Latinos don’t value education or work promotions as much as Anglos. Rivas said that’s not the case. Rather, the issue is that Latino parents don’t understand the U.S. education system, having not grown up with it, and the language barrier can make it difficult to learn about it. For promotions, Latino workers would like to be promoted, but are often hesitant because of Latino cultural norms. Latino families, for example, value keeping the family together above personal success. That can lead younger Latinos to turn down promotions that could elevate their status above someone else in their family or necessitate a move.
One of their top-line findings: The ten cities faring the best on the inclusion metrics in 2013 were also flourishing economically. “There is a strong relationship between the economic health of a city and a city’s ability to support inclusion for its residents,” the authors write in the report.
In a time of widening inequality, the findings of this report provide a roadmap for a deliberate effort to mitigate the forces that have created unequal communities. The authors conclude:
As this research illustrates, not all cities have made intentional progress, and, for some cities, economic conditions changed and prosperity was more widely shared. However, sustaining this progress toward more shared prosperity requires intentional effort, transparency, and policies.
DEE MARGO: El Paso is one region of three states and two countries and a population of 2.7 million. But we’ve been involved with Mexico for over 400 years. So we’re pretty close and proximate here. We haven’t had – we’re considered the safest city in the United States. We don’t have any real issues. And we already have a fence that was established under the Bush administration that runs through our city, so…
MS-13, for him, solves all kinds of rhetorical problems. So first of all, he wants to portray immigrants nationwide as being criminals. And that’s obviously empirically untrue. But also statistically, that’s wildly inaccurate. Crime in immigrant communities tends to be much lower. Immigrants tend to be much more law abiding than citizens.
It helps him shape the debate on DREAMers and recipients of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is kind of a big congressional issue now ever since Trump canceled the program in September of 2017. He often mentions the two in the same sentence as a way of trying to sell wholesale draconian overhauls of border security measures and interior enforcement measures. MS-13 is useful for him there.
“Our founding documents were all published in German to accommodate the German-speaking populations. For most of the 19th century, instruction in public schools across the country – from Pennsylvania to Texas to Wisconsin – occurred entirely in languages other than English, or bilingually. And this practice was not abolished until the first decades of the 20th century.”
Nor did immigrants of that era classify themselves as legal or illegal.
We [This American Life crew] spent eight months and did over a hundred interviews to try to bypass the usual rhetoric and get to the bottom of what really happened when undocumented workers showed up in one Alabama town. Pictured: Albertville “Miss Chick” 1954.
October 4, 2017
Members of the Bloomington Community,
For years the City of Bloomington Commission on Hispanic and Latino Affairs has served to identify and research the issues which impact the Hispanic/Latino populations in Bloomington, especially in the areas of health, education, public safety and cultural competency.
We support all Hispanics/Latinos including immigrants, refugees, and multi-generational U.S.-born folks who despite lifetimes in the U.S. are identified as Hispanic/Latino according to U.S. census. While the commission is not affiliated or motivated by any political party, we cannot deny that our work and sentiment is affected by the national rhetoric which vilifies and, in some cases, criminalizes the very existence of people in our community.
The decision to end DACA destabilizes the lives and futures for hundreds of thousands of folks who have no other crime than having been born outside of the lines you and I know as the U.S. border. The impact of the DACA repeal means splitting up families, interrupting communities and workplaces, and deporting adults and children to countries they have never really known. And for those of us who stay, we lose relationships, and we lose our emotional and economic investments in believing in and professing an American dream for all.
We hope to serve as a catalyst to promote positive public and private solutions to multi-faceted issues confronting Hispanic/Latino neighbors ensuring to document the resulting effects of action and inaction on our community. We unreservedly oppose the decision of the Trump Administration to end DACA especially without a defined and humane path forward for our neighbors, friends, and family.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has studied and proposed common sense immigration reform for years and published detailed analysis to dispel myths, which are used for political advantage. Opinions and false conclusions have been related as truths regarding “illegals” so we compiled a shortlist of facts for clarity.
Undocumented folks:
1. Do not receive free government healthcare. Undocumented folks do not qualify for Medicaid or the Healthy Indiana Plan.
2. Do not take jobs that would be filled by citizens. There is no correlation between high unemployment and immigration. Findings indicate undocumented folks become entrepreneurs – create jobs – at twice the rate as U.S.-born folks.
3. Do pay taxes. Taxes paid by undocumented folks proportionately to U.S.-born folks include property, excise, and sales tax. Also federal, state and local income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes are automatically deducted from paychecks just like everyone else. In 2013, undocumented folks contributed $11.6 billion in state and local taxes.
4. Are not eligible tax-funded benefit programs. Data from the Social Security Administration shows that in 2010 undocumented folks paid $13 billion in payroll taxes to Social Security and Medicare, benefits that are only accessible to citizens.
Additional findings by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce include:
– Immigrants do not drive down wages of U.S.-born workers.
– Immigrants have economically revitalized many communities.
– Immigrants do not cause crime rates to rise and are less likely to commit crime than U.S.-born individuals.
– Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would severely damage the U.S. economy.
Facts and statistics aside, we must remember that DACA recipients are human beings and members of our community. DACA recipients have lived in the U.S. most of their lives – this is home. DACA recipients have families, jobs, and contributors to our community. To drive them away will not just damage our community as a whole but, at its base, it is cruel and inhumane.
Sincerely,
City of Bloomington Commission on Hispanic and Latino Affairs
