No. Va. county sees signs of change amid crackdown
Pedro Vargas, 24, left, with his son Francisco Vargas, 4, packs up boxes at his store, Club Video Mexico, in Woodbridge, Va., Monday, April 7, 2008. Vargas, a legal resident, has decided to move his now flagging business to Utah, months after Prince William County passed policies cracking down on illegal immigrants.
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By KAREN MAHABIR/AP
Published: May 27, 2008
WOODBRIDGE, Va. (AP) _ Business at Pedro Vargas’ store, Club Video Mexico, has slid so steeply that only eight people walked through the door one day last month.
One thing he has been selling, however, are one-way bus tickets from northern Virginia to Texas and Mexico. Soon he’ll be getting his own ticket out of town — seeking a friendlier and more lucrative place to do business.
“The last few months have been very, very bad for us,“ said Vargas, who plans to move this summer from Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, to Utah, where he recently opened another store.
Many say Prince William’s new crackdown on illegal immigrants has created an environment so unfriendly that Hispanic people are leaving the county of more than 350,000, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau was nearly 15 percent Hispanic in 2006.
The county’s policy, which has drawn heated debate and national attention, directs police officers to check the immigration status of everyone they arrest. Beginning July 1, illegal immigrants also will be denied certain services, such as business licenses and mortgage and rental assistance.
“That’s like a smack in the face to me,“ said Vargas, a 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who is living in the U.S. legally. “I’ve been living here my whole life, and now they pass this law?“
It is difficult to measure how many Hispanic people have left and their exact reasons for leaving. In addition to immigrants’ fears over the new policy, the souring economy and mortgage crisis may be contributing to the departures. But anecdotal evidence increasingly points to a sudden cultural and economic shift in the county’s Hispanic community.
Several Hispanic business owners say their sales have plummeted. Prince William school officials say enrollment in English for speakers of other languages classes fell nearly 6 percent to 12,645 students between Sept. 30 and March 31. Other northern Virginia counties had increases.
Salvador Caballero, pastor of Trono de Jehova Pentecostal Church in Woodbridge, said attendance at his Spanish services has shrunk to about 130 people from 200 in recent months. Some people, he said, have stopped coming because they’re afraid to be out in public, and others have moved to other states or back to their home countries.
One family of seven packed up and went to Texas. “All they told me is they were going because they were afraid here,“ Caballero said. “We’re losing a lot of people here in Prince William. I hope they’re not going to be sorry later.“
Stephen Fuller, director for the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., said the policy could end up tainting the county’s image and scaring off investors.
“I think this will affect the county for several years even if they reverse the policy tonight,“ Fuller said. “The damage has been done. It’s like personal reputation; it’s hard to build that back.“
Supporters of the changes, however, say the crackdown is working as intended. Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart said it already has had a “tremendous positive effect on the quality of life.“
County supervisors recently approved spending $2.6 million for the initiative. Prince William also has incurred higher-than-expected costs at the local jail due to overcrowding. Authorities were taking weeks to pick up suspected illegal immigrants rather than the 72 hours mandated under a partnership between the county and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. County officials were forced to pay to house inmates in other jails in the state.
A policy that went into effect in March directed police to check the residency status of anyone who is detained, no matter how minor the offense, if they believed the person might in the United States illegally. Prince William County supervisors changed the policy last month; now police check the immigration status of all suspects, but only after they are arrested.
Stewart says the change will reduce the possibility of racial-profiling accusations because everyone will now be checked.
But Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization still opposes the policy.
“This is an ordinance that through and through sends the message to police that they ought to be stopping and detaining people that speak a foreign language and appear to be from another country,“ he said.
Nancy Lyall, of the immigrant advocacy group Mexicans Without Borders, says she doesn’t know what effect the policy change will have, but that it appears to have already damaged the Hispanic community.
“The community is still completely devastated,“ she said. “And for those obviously that have left, there’s certainly no reason for them to go back.“
At the taco restaurant Ricos Tacos Moya, business has dropped by about 50 percent, and owner Salvador Moya said he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to hold on. He was already forced to shut the doors this year on a second, much larger location in nearby Dumfries, where the bar and dance floor drew some 200 customers each weekend.
“We don’t know what we’re going to do,“ said the Mexican native, who moved to the area 20 years ago and has worked his way up from being a dishwasher. “When the law started, business went down, down, down.“
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on June 10, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Would Nancy Lyall please leave as well, and take the rest of the illegals and apologists with her and the ever so sympathetic to the poor downtrodden illegals plight ACLU. LOL. Chris Cummings
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on June 10, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Only Republicans manipluate economic statistics? How do you explain Clinton then? Since he manipulated economic statistics as well? That is if you are telling the truth about Carter’s economic statistics which you are not as i have pointed out. Disasters as you have mentioned have been happening since the “Great Flood” in the Bible. They are just more covered by the news nowadays. There have been very few days in my life of about 40 years where there wasn’t some disaster by the metric you measure it by. Fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tidal waves, mudslides, coal mine disasters, ships sinking, mass suicides, mass genocide, famine, war, disease, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Comparing Canada to California is like comparing a country that knows the meaning of a budget instead of that nightmare they call a budget in California, which keeps going up and up and up, out of control. They need safeguards on their system because illegals are taking advantage of the system and or are in charge of the budget. Hint, hint, hint. Oh by the way have i mentioned that taxes in Canada are ridiculously high. Try 14.5-15.0% sales tax on for size. Whoowee. Is that what you want for everyone and then to still have an average medical care system. There are better systems in the world, Sweden for one, as there are also many others. If Michael Moore is so hateful towards our healthcare system then why doesn’t he apply for healthcare in another country instead of the US. I agree weather propagandists come in many disguises, but yours is the best. Living in fear is no way to go through life son. Earth goes through warm phases as well as cold, animals go extinct, other animals take over. Natural selection can not be stopped unless you are God. Life goes on. Chris Cummings
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Posted by ( stoneboiler ) on June 09, 2008 at 12:52 am
zcxnissan, Canada has fewer people than California. The United States is/was a powerful economic engine that could have swallowed up universal healthcare without even a hiccup. Until the people wake-up, the govt. is going to keep on wasting money. It’s of the people, by the people, for the people. Many people will not believe in global warming until their home is destroyed by a tornado, flood, or wildfire. There is not one day that goes by in this country where one of those weather disasters is not happening. It has never happened in any other period of
our history. I talk to people on the street, they have no clue as to what is going on outside of their own little world. That is how the deniers get away with their false weather propaganda. They know who won American Idol, and what Britany and Paris are doing.
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Posted by ( stoneboiler ) on June 08, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Chris, only Republicans have to manipulate economic statistics. The reason is: they are anti-people and pro-corporation.
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on June 08, 2008 at 3:27 am
Stoneboiler, all the Presidents have manipulated econnomic statistics. LOL. Chris Cummings
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on June 07, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Those same countries with universal healthcare also have runaway taxes, in Canada the sales tax is 15%. By the way as i have said in the past my mom is from Canada. Half the scientists believe “Global Warming” is happening and half don’t. Gore would definitely have us living in fear if thats what you mean, not counting Al Qaeda and whoever else walking all over us. Then again don’t blame the present mess on me, since i exercised my freedom of choice and did not vote in 2000 for either of your illustrious candidates. As for bad economies one need look no further than Jimmy Carter who did not cut taxes and did not stimulate job growth during his one term. As for Clinton you can say he balanced the budget for a few years, however the National Debt still stood at nearly 6 Trillion. Since they turned the Debt Clock off for a few years as a publicity stunt everybody assumes their was no debt when he left office. Clinton was pounding the table for NAFTA and increasing H1b Visas which he did, as well as increasing the legal immigration level. Bush Jr. is guilty of the same shenanigans on immigration as well. Although he did try to come up with a solution. It sure has been a while since the last major hurricane to hit the US. Tornadoes have bad years and good years, one year does not make a trend as evidenced by the last couple of years lack of major hurricanes and occurring with lesser frequency. Some scientists have said that “Global Warming” may actually decrease the frequency of hurricanes. Increased rainfall? I would think that would be good for growing more food for an increasing world population. “Iceage” or “Global Warming”? The jury is still out. As for mankind we should all conserve energy, stop pollution. Common sense you know, and yet people still throw their garbage out windows <yes cigarette butts are garbage as well as a fire hazard>, pour sewage and oil in storm drains that empty into streams, creeks, rivers, oceans. I still see garbage by the sides of the road, plastic in trees, raw sewage being poured into rivers and oceans by companies that don’t care <both owned by Democrats and Republicans>, believe me their are crooked politicians of every stripe, gay, lesbian, male, female, black, white, hispanic, etc. etc. I can name just as many Republicans i don’t like as Democrats. Does that not make me just a little more impartial than you can comprehend. I can’t stand Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Trent Lott, and a whole host of local politicians like Marty Nohe, Frank Principi, Tom Davis. I don’t particularly care for McCain or Obama. Faith in God is worth far more than a Presidential vote. Either way we are faced with much higher taxes to pay for potentially substandard care, waiting lines. This will be long after the war in Iraq is paid off. I believe the longterm is far more important than a supposed shortterm fix. Of course i am not counting the continued fight against “Global Terrorism” unless of course the next president withdraws from that as well??? Those countries we are competing against also have higher unemployment rates and it looks like we are on the way to joining them. Cheap labor has been flooding in since the Amnesty bill of 1986, the worst thing that Reagan did as President. It encouraged millions of others to break the law and destabilize the economy for the legal citizenry. Of course since 2006, Democrats as well as some Republicans have been unwilling to enforce the “immigration laws” pertaining towards employers and illegal employees. Only just recently has a hardcore group stood up with the best interests of the legal immigrants at heart. This so called cancer by apologists has only gotten stronger and will be the greatest cure for this hideous disease. Sounds like you have Carter’s actual unemployment nd inflation figures mixed up, inflation and interest rates were higher than 12%. Carter had 8.9% unemployment, currently under Bush it is 5.5% and it was lower as well under Clinton. Any President can beat the statistical lows set by Carter. The all time “Misery Index” leader. Cutting tax rates improved growth and created the booming economy of the 80’s and 90’s as well as most of the 2000’s. Each with their minor downturns of course. Spending on useless programs and programs that squander money with no safety checks, like Food Stamps, WIC, healthcare for the poor, and for programs like the bridge to nowhere, or the Farm Subsidy bill which is being pilfered by celebrities and politicians alike just because they own property that is covered and no crops are actually grown. As well as pork, kickbacks, lobbyists. Not one politician has turned their back on lobbyists even McCain and Obama. Just plain fact. Cutting spending is the key. Neither party is willing to do it. If you consider inflation than that 800 billion is more like 2.5-3 trillion in today’s dollars since inflation always rises.
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Posted by ( stoneboiler ) on June 07, 2008 at 4:39 am
zcxnisson, so it is okay for the wealthy to get tax breaks, while the middle class slob has to grovel for enough change to keep from going homeless or starving?
I think they’ve got you slightly brainwashed. They call it the Stockholm syndrome. The huge tax breaks didn’t start going to the rich until Reagan cut the top marginal rate(what the wealthy paid)from 70% down to around 35%. Kennedy had lowered it from around 91%. The tax revenue from between 35% and 70% went to maintain the infrastructure of this country,ie,levees, bridges, highways, etc. One example was there was no money for the levee in New Orleans because Ronnie had cut the top rate too much. After the Republicans cut the top rate from 70 to 35%, they started borrowing and squandering like a drunken navy to pay the countries bills. That is why we are almost 10 trillion dollars in debt.
When Carter left office there was a 53 billion surplus in Social Security. They made quick work of that. Even the national debt when Carter left was only about 800 billion which is a lot less than ten trillion. They figured they could do anything they wanted as long as they gave out tax cuts. They were right, it was just like christmas every payday. Then Bushco and the Grinch showed up and spoiled it all. The economy is far worse now than when Carter was president. Everyone who wanted to work in the 70s was working and all of the factories were humming.
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Posted by ( stoneboiler ) on June 07, 2008 at 1:20 am
ecxnissan, all of the economic numbers coming out of the present administration are bogus. Some economists crunched the present Bush numbers and used the same method of calculation that was used during the Carter administration. They found the unemployment rate was over 10%. They found that inflation was over 12%. And they found that todays GDP would have been nonexistant under Carter. This administration also shifted to using the household survey rather than the payroll survey that had been used by all previous admins. You can be dead but not buried under the household survey and be counted as employed, as long as you still have your work boots
on and laced-up. Under the Household survey you can bet that they are also counting the illegals. Thanks to Repubs, companies don’t have to declare the nationality of their employees.(Household survey again) How do you think we could lose six million or more jobs and maintain a 5.0% unemployment rate. The plan always was to flood the country with cheap labor to do what you were complaining about:eliminate high medical costs, a living wage, decent pensions. Patriotism is protecting American jobs…all of them, we have none to spare.
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Posted by ( stoneboiler ) on June 06, 2008 at 11:54 pm
zcxnissan, first of all NAFTA would have been thrown out or fixed under Gore. When I worked for a union, we were told it wasn’t wages, pensions, but runaway medical costs. The countries we are competing against have universal healthcare, so the cost of healthcare is not shifted to the
product. The Republicans have backed the medical and pharmaceutical industries almost to a Congress person.
All of the other industrialized countries have some form of universal healthcare. They can’t understand how Americans are herded around like sheep.
One of the big lies is, Canadians and Europeans don’t like their medical systems. There is no debate on “Global Warming.“ You have a few desk jockey scientists who are afraid not to defend the global warming ‘denier’ position.
The contras say there have been no major hurricanes…yuck, yuck. But the yoyos don’t realize that tornadoes have been taking up the slack. The length of time between Katrina and now, is but a millisecond in the life of the world.
Bill Clinton left a surplus that was growing in leaps and bounds. We were heading into he first stages of a mini- utopia. now we are headed into a mini-iceage.
Only the right wing would make a bad thing out of protecting American jobs. All they had to do was put an ‘ism on the end to make it a dirty word. Limbaugh is the “Great Pied Piper of Propaganda” and very few Dittoheads can escape the long march on the way to voting against their own best interests.
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on June 05, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Soneboiler if that was true why was he pushing it for 8+ years and why was his wife still pushing for it during the primary and Obama as well. Sounds like those Rebublicans are Democrats. LOL. Glad i am neither. Overall wages have risen while Clinton and Bush Jr. were in office, that’s true. Most other things rose in price as well like healthcare, gas prices and food prices, since some crops like corn are being wasted on ethanol production, which may actually be accelerating “Global Warming” according to some scientists, that is if it is really happening??? Of course their are no manufacturing jobs left in America, because America is competing against the rest of the world, and big pensions and monstrous health benefits just don’t cut it any more vs. the bottom line, oh the humanity. Outsourcing became all the rage once the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, etc. etc. knew they could make products cheaper and sometimes better than American companies. This was happening even before Clinton and Bush Jr. Pray tell us how or why McCain or Obama are going to stop it? Huge tax breaks have been going to businesses for decades, it won’t stop with either of these two Liberals in there. Maybe the country deserves a split ticket with Obama/McCain. Of course the “Left Wing Establishment” is happy with those cheap illegal voters. Tougher enforcement against illegals and their employers be they Democrat or Republican is the only solution to this continuing problem. With that said why would the President make the economic downturn worse by creating a subprime mess which would have happened no matter who was in office. Do you really think the next President would be dumb enough to tap into the Oil Reserve for a quick fix only to create n o longterm solution and make prices go even higher, i sure would like to know which fantasyland you are living in. Under Gore or Kerry we most definitely would have had higher oil prices, and to boot higher taxes. Pick your poison, i would rather have lower taxes. Sorry Stoneboiler just about everything you hear about Carter was true, take the blinders off. Oil prices rose 300% under Carter, double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, meaning no one could afford to buy houses, cars, etc. Near double digit unemployment rate. The misery index set a record under Jimmy Carter, the one index invented by the President who had the worst rating ever on it. Failed hostage rescue mission with soldiers killed. Hostages held for more than a year. It took another President elected to force the maniacs hands. Gas shortages, gas lines, people getting killed and beaten for gas. These are the best of times compared to that. In the long run President Carter will be remembered as the worst President in history even topping Hoover, Nixon, Johnson, and Bush Jr. Chris Cummings
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