Stats move little since Oklahoma begins alien law
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008
When Oklahoma passed America’s toughest illegal-alien law, advocates and opponents alike predicted immigrants would flee the state, many of them bound for Arkansas.
Three months after the law took effect, the Rev. Miguel Rivera, a Hispanic activist, estimates that the “ethnic cleansing” has driven 50, 000 Hispanic immigrants out. Randy Terrill, the law’s chief architect, was quick to agree it’s spurring an exodus.
“What was Oklahoma’s problem is slowly and surely becoming the problem of some of the surrounding states,” he said.
Along Arkansas’ western border, school districts report no influx of Hispanic students. In eastern Oklahoma, landlords, school administrators and builders said they see few, if any, signs of a large-scale migration.
“I was expecting a doomsday scenario,” said Paul Kane, chief executive of the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa. But the Nov. 1 effective date came and went with no contractors calling in to report a shortage of framers or roofers, he said.
“A lot of the hysteria was just that,” Kane concluded. “It was hysteria.”
Rivaled only by Arizona for putting up a hard front against illegal immigration, Oklahoma has made it a felony to drive an illegal alien to work or to rent an apartment to an illegal alien.
Under the new law, the state also denies illegal aliens driver’s licenses and public benefits such as college scholarships. It has empowered state and local police to begin enforcing federal immigration laws. Starting this summer, businesses with government contracts must screen new hires through a federal database to verify their legal status.
The provisions of House Bill 1804, as the Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007 is commonly called, are taking hold in a charged atmosphere.
While business interests, led by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, are suing to block the employment measures, legislators are pushing competing bills. One would dilute the law; another would clamp down harder. Meanwhile, citizen groups are mobilizing advertising offensives. “We’re united on this one issue we call the illegal immigration invasion,” said Carol Helm, the Tulsa grandmother who leads a pro-House Bill 1804 group called IRON, short for “Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now.” Behind the counter of an appliance shop in immigrant-heavy eastern Tulsa, Lonnie Vaughan sold another refrigerator to “a Hispanic brother” last week — and promised that an upcoming media blitz by the anti-1804 group United Front Task Force would spread “the true information.”
RUMORS AND ANECDOTES As for quantifying Oklahoma’s Hispanic migration to other states, hard information is hard to come by. There have been no formal studies assessing how many Hispanics have moved out because of the law, said Terrill, a Republican state representative from Moore.
Anecdotal reports surfaced before the legislature passed the law last May: A nursery workforce vanished, apparently bound for Arkansas, one early report said. Others suggested that it’s become harder to find a good landscaper. The Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, extrapolating from church attendance numbers, has estimated that as many as 25, 000 Hispanics have fled the Tulsa area. Illegal immigrants are a shadowy population, and there are no verifiable data to document the moves.
“We don’t have a specific database regarding those numbers,” acknowledged Rivera, the activist whose National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders went to court in a failed attempt to block the law.
Rivera said he bases his estimate of 50, 000 departed immigrants on the Hispanic chamber’s estimate and on reports from churches in his coalition. He said they have reported that their congregations have declined by about 12 percent.
Others suggest, however, that immigrants have just gone underground.
“My gut feeling is that a lot of them are still here, but they’re laying low,” said Vaughan, the United Front member.
David Forrest, a real-estate consultant who tracks the Tulsa apartment market, listed the new law as one of several factors — ranging from “predictable to horrific to downright wacky” — that drove the rental markets last year.
“We do know that occupancies have softened somewhat on properties that had a high Hispanic concentration,” said Forrest, a vice president with commercial real-estate broker CB Richard Ellis in Oklahoma City.
Apartment occupancy rates in east Tulsa, home of the city’s cheapest rentals, dipped only slightly, however — from 91 percent at year-end 2006 to 90 percent at the end of last year, Forrest’s reports show.
At Bryan Properties, which manages about 300 houses and duplexes, many of them in east Tulsa, owner Kimberly Smedley said fewer Spanish-speaking people are looking to rent. House Bill 1804 hasn’t cost her any of her tenants or made it harder to find someone to patch a leaky roof, she said.
“It has not had a negative impact on my business at all,” said Smedley, a strong supporter of the get-tough law.
“If anything, it should be stricter,” she said, resentful that illegal aliens get medical care while her uninsured father had to wait two weeks for surgery after a recent heart attack.
The Rev. David Medina, director of the Hispanic Apostolate at the Catholic Diocese in Tulsa, didn’t return calls. Rexine Reynolds, a volunteer for Catholic Charities, said fewer Hispanics show up for the food and clothing she helps supply for needy families.
“It’s off by maybe half,” she said.
Dick Anderson, vice president of Associated General Contractors of Oklahoma, said he got only a couple of reports from panicked contractors afraid the new immigration law would wipe out their work force.
“A big concrete contractor thought he was going to lose a third of his work force,” Anderson said of the association which has offices in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
“And then we had a landscape contractor who thought all 92 of his guys were going to move to Arkansas,” Anderson said. “They never came to fruition.” ENROLLMENTS UNCHANGED
In Arkansas, Tricia Todd, director of the English as a second language program for the Rogers School District, counted 4, 009 English-language learners, an increase of 300 from last year. She said that’s an average increase.
School officials in Siloam Springs and Fort Smith also reported no surge in Hispanic enrollments.
No wonder: Schools in eastern Oklahoma aren’t losing Hispanic students in any significant numbers.
In the Tulsa Union district, spokesman Gretchen Haas-Bethell said Hispanic enrollment increased from 2, 451 students on Oct. 1 to 2, 672 on Feb. 15.
In the Tulsa School District, the state’s largest, Hispanic enrollment is off by 258 students — a decline so marginal that the Hispanic percentage of total enrollment didn’t budge from 19 percent.
“In reality, it has not had a significant impact,” said Tulsa School District spokesman Tami Marler. At Tulsa’s Kendall-Whittier Elementary, a 1, 000-pupil grade school with a Hispanic enrollment approaching 60 percent, Principal Judy Feary said rumors spread fast in advance of the new law and parents are still fearful. At last check, the school had lost no more than 80 Hispanic pupils, she said. Eastern Oklahoma school districts in Poteau, Tahlequah, Pryor, Fort Gibson and Heavener also reported either tiny declines or stable enrollments.
ENFORCEMENT LACKING Observers say immigrants are staying because they realize that the get-tough law is only as tough as its enforcement.
Tulsa County’s jail booked 112 immigrants on immigration detainers during January. Jailers lodged detainers on 81 more so far this month. Most are Hispanic.
In Sequoyah County, over the state line from Fort Smith, John Bennett, designated immigration liaison for the sheriff’s office, said he detained eight immigrants after a neighbor alerted police that they didn’t speak English and might not be legal.
“I’ve got people calling me and telling me where they’re at,” Bennett said. “I’ve got people telling me, ‘ Thanks for getting rid of them because they’re a nuisance to our community. ’”
Police statewide have not adopted a proactive enforcement posture that includes making workplace raids. Rumors of police vans parked outside a Catholic church in Tulsa to check papers as parishioners filed out created fears, Kane said. He has since heard that some immigrants who left are returning, he said.
“Once they realized Oklahoma had not turned into a Gestapo state, they thought they would come on home,” he said. For his part, Vaughan, of United Front, still is shuttling immigrants without driver’s licenses to the church where he is associate pastor. “Every time I get in the van, I’m committing a felony,” he said, convinced that some of the flock are in the country illegally. But he said he doesn’t believe, even in the state with America’s toughest immigration law, Oklahoma would bring a felony charge against a citizen for driving someone to church.
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