The Secret is Getting Out: Some anti-immigrant violence never gets reported

map from NYT, for link click here

After seeing a car purposefully side-swipe an immigrant yesterday, I have been thinking about how often this must happen, but is not reported. (see dreamacttexas post "The Danger of Walking Down the Street Without Papers," August 4, 2008)

The town where Luis Ramirez was murdered is a few miles from Hazelton - the place that tried to run off all the immigrants. Hazelton's mayor said "he saw no connection [between Luis Ramirez's violent death and]...his town’s ordinance.

Of course not - communities certainly don't imitate each other; hatred doesn't spread; people aren't racist; people don't hate immigrants - just the ones who are "illegal."

"town leaders have now heard about a number of incidents from Mexican residents that were never reported." - NYT

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Mexican's Death Bares a Town's Ethnic Tension

New York Times
by Sean D. Hamill
August 5, 2008

SHENANDOAH, Pa. — Crystal Dillman knows that four teenagers have been charged in the death of her fiancé, Luis Ramirez, that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is monitoring the case and that most people in this small town in the Appalachian Mountains believe it was a horrible crime...

They have all pleaded not guilty.

After anthracite coal was discovered near the town in the late 1800s, immigrants poured in, mainly from Europe. The hamlet grew to a borough of 25,000 before the mines started to close. The immigrant groups largely got along, but they also felt the need to ethnically divide not just their churches — some of which are still considered “the Italian church” or “the Irish church” — but also the town’s volunteer fire companies.

The town’s biggest festival every year is Heritage Days near the end of August, when the major ethnic groups, among them the Lithuanians, Irish, Italians, Greeks and, more recently, Mexicans, put floats in a parade and sell ethnic food from booths.

Mr. Ramirez’s death has also reignited a regional debate over immigration that began two years ago when the town of Hazleton, about 20 miles from Shenandoah, enacted an ordinance that sought to discourage people from hiring or renting to illegal immigrants.

At the time, Shenandoah, whose Hispanic population has grown to about 10 percent, from 2.8 percent in 2000, considered a similar ordinance but held off after Hazleton was sued.

Even then, there were signs of tension. After the debate over the Hazleton ordinance, Shenandoah’s Mexican community pulled out of Heritage Days in 2006.

“They just didn’t feel comfortable then,” said Flor Gomez, whose family runs a Mexican restaurant in town.

Many people believe the debate fueled by Hazleton’s actions helped create the environment that led to Mr. Ramirez’s death.

“Clearly there were a lot of factors here,” said Ms. Limón, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has been helping Ms. Dillman. “But I do believe that the inflammatory rhetoric in the immigration debate does have a correlation with increased violence against Latinos.”

Hazleton’s mayor, Lou Barletta, said he saw no connection to his town’s ordinance, which was scrapped after the town lost a court battle.

“It’s a tragedy what happened to that man,” Mr. Barletta said. “But I don’t believe our ordinance had anything to do with it. Every person is responsible for their own actions.”

James P. Goodman, the Schuylkill County district attorney, who is prosecuting the case, said ethnic intimidation cases were rare in his county.

But town leaders have now heard about a number of incidents from Mexican residents that were never reported. The town is trying to reach out to them, said Mayor O’Neill, who said he still could not believe the fear some residents had expressed to him.

“How it came to that point, I don’t know,” he said. “But maybe these are things that it is good that it came out.”

for link to complete NYT article click here