Side by Side, but
Divided Over Immigration
Published: May 11, 2010 - New York Times
ALBUQUERQUE — As the Arizona Legislature steamed ahead with the most
stringent immigration
enforcement bill in the country this year, this state’s House of Representatives
was unanimously passing a resolution recognizing the economic benefits of
illegal immigrants.
While the Arizona police will check driver’s licenses and other documents to
root out illegal immigrants, New Mexico allows illegal residents to obtain
driver’s licenses as a public safety measure.
And if Gov. Jan
Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, has become, for now, the public face of
tough immigration enforcement, Gov. Bill
Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, has told any interviewer who will
listen about his effort to “to integrate immigrants that are here and make them
part of society and protect the values of our Hispanic and multiethnic
communities.”
They may sit side by side on the border, they may share historical ties to
Mexico; they may have once even been part of the same territory, but Arizona and
New Mexico have grown up like distant siblings.
People on all sides of the immigration debate have taken notice.
“If a burglar breaks into your home, do you serve him dinner? That is pretty
much what they do there with illegals,” said State Representative John Kavanagh
of Arizona, a Republican. Mr. Kavanagh is one of the staunchest supporters of
the new law there, which will give the local police broad power to check the
legal status of people they stop and suspect are in the country illegally.
But Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a liberal group in
Washington that advocates reworking immigration law, offered New Mexico as a
model of balancing a push for border security — Mr. Richardson once declared a
state of emergency there — with coping with the illegal immigrants already in
this country.
“Richardson has got it,” Mr. Sharry said.
Even supporters of Arizona’s law here — and there are some — agree that such
a measure would never pass in New Mexico, given the outcry among legislators and
immigrant advocates that the police in Arizona might detain and question Latinos
who are legal residents and citizens but are mistaken for illegal immigrants.
Why the difference?
First, New Mexico (population two million) has the highest percentage of
Hispanics of any state — 45 percent, compared with 30 percent in Arizona
(population 6.5 million), and they historically have commanded far more
political power than their neighbors do. The New Mexico Legislature is 44
percent Hispanic, a contrast to the 16 percent in Arizona, according to the
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
Both were once part of Mexico and, later, the same United States territory.
But since they became states in 1912, New Mexico has had five Hispanic governors
(including Mr. Richardson, whose mother is Mexican), and Arizona has had one,
according to the group.
New Mexico’s legislators embrace the civil rights protections in the state’s
Constitution — including so-called unamendable provisions akin to a Bill of
Rights that historically protected Spanish-speaking citizens of the former
Mexican territory — and often mount a “protective stance” toward immigrants
regardless of legal status, said Christine M. Sierra, a political science
professor at the University
of New Mexico.
“When the community at large feels threatened, folks close ranks and join in
solidarity to protect the group,” Professor Sierra said, noting that Arizona
Latinos have struggled to assume the same kind of a power in a state where a
greater influx of Anglos (the general term for non-Hispanic whites) over the
decades has diluted their strength.
The flow of drugs and illegal immigrants over the sparsely populated, remote
border here, moreover, pales compared with that in Arizona, whose border, dotted
with towns and roads facilitating trafficking, registers the highest number of
drug seizures and arrests of illegal crossers of any state.
The estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona, whose population
explosion of the past few decades has been a magnet for low-wage work, is more
than eight times that of the estimated 55,000 here in Albuquerque, where the
economy turns more on government, military and high-skill jobs.
Though concerns about immigration and the border arise, particularly in the
southern “boot heel” of New Mexico, the burner setting is low.
“It’s not that there isn’t social tension between Hispanics and
non-Hispanics,” said Jose Z. Garcia, a political scientist at New Mexico State
University. “We just have learned to tolerate each other and get along.”
Illegal immigrants here agree. Where fear and anxiety pervade their
communities in Arizona to the point that some do not venture outside or have
left the state, here they live more openly and are less guarded.
“People give us food, a place to sleep,” said Samuel Duran, 35, a day
laborer looking for work in a Santa Fe park. “The police bother us when they
have a reason, like a fight, but in general they leave us alone.”
Marta Nebarez, who manages a grocery store in a heavily immigrant
neighborhood in Albuquerque, said that newly arriving illegal immigrants had an
easier time here and that word was spreading. Some customers have told her that
a few families from Arizona have moved here.
“This government helps people a lot more than over there,” she said, noting
several measures, including a state law enacted in 2005 that allows illegal
immigrants to pay the same tuition rate as legal, in-state residents.
In an interview, Mr. Richardson promoted that measure as only fair to
children who had no choice in being raised here, and said that other measures
improved public health, like the Department of Health’s cooperation in a health
referral service run by the Mexican Consulate for Mexican citizens.
But New Mexico’s patience could be tested, and some fear that the Arizona law
will push more illegal immigrants into the state, though they typically go where
the most jobs are found.
Steve Wilmeth, a cattle rancher near Las Cruces, 30 miles north of the
border, said he had grown frustrated with finding illegal immigrants crossing
his property and recalled a harrowing confrontation a couple of years ago with a
group of 20 near a watering tank. “SB 1070,” Mr. Wilmeth said, referring to the
Arizona law, which he supports, “is a desperate attempt by the people of Arizona
to do something about the onslaught they face.”
Violence on the Mexican side of the border — one of the bloodiest cities,
Ciudad Juárez, is an hour’s drive from Las Cruces — has heightened anxiety. So,
too, has the shooting death of a rancher in southern Arizona near the New Mexico
border by someone the police theorize may have been connected to smuggling.
Mr. Richardson responded by sending 35 National Guard troops to the boot-heel
area and repeating a call for more help from the federal government.
Border and immigration issues have spilled into political campaigns, but the
issue has not topped residents’ concerns, said Brian Sanderoff, a veteran
pollster here.
One Republican running in her party’s primary for governor this year, Susana
Martinez, a southern New Mexico prosecutor, has filmed a commercial promoting
border security and a promise to revoke the law granting driver’s licenses to
illegal immigrants and deny taxpayer-supported scholarships to illegal
immigrants.
Last year, the mayor of Albuquerque, Richard J. Berry, won office after a
campaign that included a vow to give the city police more discretion to check
the immigration status of offenders. Five months into office, Mr. Berry has said
he is still reviewing the policy.
Mr. Richardson, who believes that illegal immigrants should pay back taxes,
learn English and take other steps as a condition of getting legal status, makes
no apologies for seeking to integrate them, calling them a net plus for the
state.
“I just have always felt that this is part of my heritage,” he said, noting
his early years spent in Mexico City. “There is a decided positive in
encouraging biculturalism and people working and living together instead of
inciting tension. The worry I have about Arizona is it is going to spread. It
arouses the nativist instinct in people.”