FARM WORKERS DEMAND JUSTICE!

Miami Herald
Editorial
Posted on Mon, Dec. 15, 2008
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/story/813206.html
Rule changes target vulnerable workers

OUR OPINION: Don't allow last-minute regulations to erode standards
The torrent of new rules being issued by the Bush administration as it heads out the door is turning into a regulatory fiasco. The changes have lowered the bar on environmental review across the board, from limiting worker exposure to toxins to ignoring provisions of the Clean Water Act and softening, if not gutting, the Endangered Species Act. Late last week, new rules targeted vulnerable members of the labor force -- farmworkers.
Regulatory end-run

The midnight changes have a sad history. At least since the days of the Carter administration, presidents have tried to extend their reach into the tenure of the next chief executive by putting in place last-minute rules that the successor will have difficulty rescinding. The fact that all presidents do it, however, does not excuse the regulatory end-run, especially when the rules seem like a favor to special interests rather than thoughtful changes in policy.

The new farmworker regulations are a case in point. Because farmworkers don't enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, they have traditionally been prey to abuses that a succession of administrations have tried to correct through Labor Department policy rules. The latest changes don't augur well for the farmworkers.

Rules that are to be published this week and which would take effect just days before President Bush leaves office would: make it easier to hire foreign ''guest workers'' -- to the detriment of Americans willing to work in the fields; lower wage standards; and weaken oversight of farm hiring.

This revision will hurt those who can least afford any cuts in pay or erosion of job protections. The changes in hiring rules are particularly egregious because the greatest fear of domestic farmworkers is being displaced by foreign guest workers who are less familiar with their rights and more likely to remain quiet when those rights are abused for fear of being deported.

AgJobs bill

Reversing the new H-2A rules, as they are known, won't be easy. It would require going through a lengthy ''notice and comment'' rule-changing process again next year. The best thing that President-elect Barack Obama can do is to push for enactment of a bipartisan AgJobs bill already in Congress that has the support of both farmworker unions and agricultural growers.

The proposal includes some of the changes in the H-2A proposal but with a significant difference: It would link the program to a path for legalization of undocumented farmworkers who pledge to continue working in agriculture for a certain period.

Florida is home to about 10 percent of the nation's farm workforce. If this administration won't do anything to lift their standards, the next one should make it a priority.


Bruce Goldstein
Farmworker Justice
1126 16th Street, N.W., Suite 270
Washington, D.C. 20036
Phone: 202-293-5420
Read and Donate at www.farmworkerjustice.org
Blog at www.harvestingjustice.org

Immigrant Business Owners Contribute to the US economy.

Estimating the Contribution
of Immigrant Business Owners
to the U.S. Economy
by
Robert W. Fairlie, Ph.D.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs334tot.pdf

Overall Findings
According to Census 2000, immigrants constitute
12.2 percent of the total U.S. work force, and 12.5
percent of the total population of U.S. business owners.
The total business income generated by immigrant
business owners is $67 billion, representing
11.6 percent of all business income in the United
States. Immigrant business ownership is geographically
concentrated in a few states.
Highlights
• Immigrants are nearly 30 percent more likely to
start a business than are nonimmigrants, and they
represent 16.7 percent of all new business owners
in the United States
• Immigrant business owners make significant
contributions to business income, generating
$67 billion of the $577 billion in U.S. business
income, as estimated from 2000 U.S. Census
Immigrant business ownership is geographically
concentrated in a few states. Nearly 30 percent
of all business owners in California are immigrants,
compared with about 12.5 percent of the
population of U.S. business owners. Twenty-five
percent of business owners in New York and
more than 20 percent in New Jersey, Florida, and
Hawaii are foreign-born.
• In California, immigrants are 34.2 percent of
the new business owners each month. Nearly 30
percent of all new business owners per month in
New York, Florida, and Tex as are immigrants.
• Immigrants own 11.2 percent of businesses with
$100,000 or more in sales and 10.8 percent of
businesses with employees.
• Immigrants' contributions differ across sectors
of the economy. They own a large share—more
than one-fifth—of businesses in the arts, entertainment,
and recreation industry. They also contribute
significantly to other services, transportation,
and wholesale and retail trade.
• Immigrants also own a large share of businesses
in the lowest and highest skill sectors and in several
industries.
• Although business owners from Mexico constitute
the largest share of immigrant business
owners, total immigrant business ownership,
formation, and income originate with immigrant
business owners from around the world.
data. They generate nearly one-quarter of all
business income in California—nearly $20 billion—
and nearly one-fifth of business income in
New York, Florida, and New Jersey.

Illinois congressman vows to push for major immigration reform

12:00 AM CST on Friday, December 5, 2008

By JOHN RILEY / The Dallas Morning News
jriley@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – Flanked by hundreds of immigrants and their family members, an Illinois congressman called for a halt Thursday to immigration raids and vowed to push for a comprehensive overhaul that President-elect Barack Obama can sign into law.

Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago, the House sponsor of a 2007 bill that failed, told a crowd of more than 200 on Capitol Hill that he would work to ensure that Mr. Obama follows through on his campaign promise to sign an immigration overhaul in the first year of his presidency.

"We have a new president of the United States who has made a very clear commitment to immigration reform," Mr. Gutierrez said. "We're not going to rest on the laurels of the election."

Mr. Gutierrez said workplace raids that separate families must stop and that he is trying to build momentum for immigration change in the House, where he believes a bill can be passed more easily than in the Senate.

Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he hopes to meet with the president-elect before the new session of Congress to discuss a comprehensive reform and urge Mr. Obama to stop workforce raids through an executive order.

Mr. Baca said a moratorium would make illegal immigrants more likely to "come out of the shadows" and be active community participants because it would reduce the fear of deportation. Immigration officials and supporters of the current strategy say it has helped reduce illegal immigration and held employers accountable.

© 2008, The Dallas Morning News, Inc.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/stories/DN-immigraids_05nat.ART.State.Edition1.4a82527.html

Detained Immigrants Face Harsh Conditions!

ACLU alleges rights abuses
Report: Detained immigrants face harsh conditions
By Maria Sacchetti
Globe Staff / December 10, 2008

Immigrants jailed for deportation in Massachusetts are often subject to harsh conditions, including inadequate medical care, harassment, and overcrowding, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said in a report to be released today.


The report alleges that state and county jails and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are failing to oversee the detainees' treatment.


"There's no one watching over them, so there's no real incentive to make sure that the immigration detainees' rights are protected," said Laura Rótolo, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts and the lead researcher on the 22-month investigation. "They are not protecting people's fundamental rights."


ICE confirmed=2 0that the agency received letters from the ACLU of Massachusetts about its findings, and is in the process of responding fully.


"We take all allegations about conditions of confinement very seriously," said ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier, who added that the agency follows federal guidelines to ensure that immigrants are treated humanely. "ICE is committed to providing all detainees in our care with humane and safe detention environments and ensuring that adequate medical services are available."


For the report, the ACLU interviewed 40 detainees and corresponded with more than 30 other inmates, spoke with dozens of advocates and lawyers, and reviewed hundreds of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The authors of the report called for an end to immigration raids and alternatives to detaining immigrants, such as electronic monitoring bracelets.


As of August 2007, about 800 immigrants and asylum-seekers were in seven county jails, one state facility, and one federal medical center, although the report said none are serving time for crimes. Many detainees have criminal records, but the report's authors estimate that more than half have overstayed a visa, are awaiting a decision on asylum, or sneaked over the border - all civil violations. The cost of housing them is roughly $90 a day to the US government, the report said.


Jessica Vau ghan, recently named director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said detaining immigrants - especially criminals - is important because it ensures that they will be deported.


"The odds are if we don't detain them that they're not going to be removed," said Vaughan, who is based in Franklin. "Then they become fugitives and they have to be tracked down."


The report documented several cases in which medical care was delayed or denied to immigrants, reportedly because they were about to be deported.


One 43-year-old Pakistani national, the report said, waited five months to have a specialist look at a painful lesion inside his mouth. He was released after the specialist ordered a biopsy, which was never performed, and is still awaiting deportation.


A 27-year-old Liberian national, diagnosed with schizophrenia, bounced among three county jails with a skin condition and dental problems that were left untreated for months.


Some mental health issues were ignored as well, the report found. An immigrant was removed from Bridgewater State Hospital and transferred to New Mexico, and then to Rhode Island, without his medications or health records.


The report was released at a time when ICE is investigating the August death of a 34-year-old Chinese national who allegedly received inadequate care at Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island. On Monday, ICE relocated 153 detainees from the center during its review.


Detainees also complained about crowding as well. At one point in Essex County, inmates were sleeping in the gymnasium, though they have since been relocated. The six New England states have space for approximately 1,200 detainees a day, the report said.


Interviewees complained about being assigned to cells with violent criminals and of guards who threatened them with sedation or harassed them if they complained about jail conditions or resisted deportation.


In Suffolk County, two detainees were transferred to Franklin County after complaining to the media about a strip search. A female detainee said she was sent to York, Pa., after she complained about her protracted detention.


Detainees spent an average of 11 months in Massachusetts jails awaiting deportation, Rótolo said, based on her interviews with 40 detainees. One man spent more than five years in jail fighting deportation before he was released to continue battling his case. Three immigrants spent more than two years in jail, and 10 spent more than a year in jail.


Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.


© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/12/10/aclu_alleges_rights_abuses/

Hate Crime Against Immigrants/Latinos on the Rise!

MALDEF CALLS FOR NATIONAL ACTION IN WAKE OF KILLING OF THIRD LATINO VICTIM OF A HATE CRIME IN FIVE MONTHS
As we have reported, hate crimes against Latinos are at record levels. Today, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) President & General Counsel John Trasviña called upon leaders across all communities to unite and speak out against hate violence:



“We mourn and are outraged by the murder in Brooklyn, New York of Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhañay, whose life was violently taken by a group of people, and whose crime, according to witnesses, was motivated by hate-filled bigotry. Only one month ago, 37-year old Marcello Lucero was ferociously beaten and fatally stabbed in Long Island, New York by a group of teenagers who hunted him down simply for being Latino. In July, 25-year old Luis Ramirez lost his life after he was knocked unconscious and kicked in the head by a group of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania teenagers who yelled racial epithets before and during the brutal beating. We extend our sympathies to their families and loved ones.


In the past several years, hate crimes against Latinos have risen 40 percent. This is a national epidemic whose growth is spurred each day by hate speech and anti-immigrant sentiment expressed on cable shows, local radio shows and across the airwaves. National legislation, such as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, must be a top priority for Congress and the new Administration, but it is not sufficient to reach the hate that threatens to pervade local communities. This drastic rise of hate crimes against Latinos, not coincidentally, has occurred during the same years in which there has been an explosive rebirth of extremist anti-immigrant rhetoric and measures.


The serious topic of immigration has been contaminated by hatred and racism, and has created a toxic climate which fosters and condones violence and civil rights violations motivated by bigotry. In seeking to enact unconstitu tional anti-immigrant ordinances, irresponsible elected officials spew inflammatory rhetoric that depicts undocumented immigrants as parasites and the root cause of the nation’s fallen economy. Television and radio personalities spread misinformation and stereotypes that criminalize and dehumanize Latino immigrants. Meanwhile, white supremacist groups are using this anti-immigrant wave to promote their racist groups and promote violent acts against Latinos. Collectively, the messages and norms they seek to establish are that immigrants are less human and less worthy, and do not merit basic human rights protections our Constitution demands. These messages have begun to infect too many Americans, and they are being manifested through violence.

Unfortunately, our elected leaders have failed to recognize and condemn this national crisis, the media has largely remained silent, and families have not acted to protect their children from being infected from this hatred. As proven by this year’s historic election, the great majority of Americans have defeated artificial barriers of racism and ushered us into a new era. After over a century of struggle for freedom and democracy irrespective of race, Americans have abolished the disease of racial hatred; however, a virus continues to linger with some, and we must not allow it to proliferate. There are those that may believe that racism and xenophobia will always exist, but it must not exist in our country, in our democratic institutions, in our schools, and in our homes. We must be ever-vigilant, and stamp it out where we see it.


MALDEF calls upon our national representatives, faith leaders, educators, and parents to stand up and take immediate action against this national wave of hatred. We again call on Congress and the next President to fix our broken, archaic immigration system to establish national immigration priorities, including community integration that serves the nation’s interests, allows newcomers to work with legal status and protections against exploitation, and safeguards the nation’s communities. Local and federal authorities must prosecute hate crimes to the fullest extent under law. Local officials and media personalities must take responsibility for the consequences of their extremist rhetoric and should spread messages of respect and tolerance. Most importantly, we call on all Americans to unite against this wave of hatred and defeat the hate and violence. It is unacceptable and we must stop it now.”



KJ



December 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)





© Copyright 2005 by Law Professor Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.

DID A MISSISSIPPI RAID PROTECT RIGHTWING POLITICIANS?

DID A MISSISSIPPI RAID PROTECT RIGHTWING POLITICIANS?
By David Bacon
TruthOut Feature
http://www.truthout.org/article/did-a-mississippi-raid-protect-rightwing-politicians

LAUREL, MS (8/31/08) -- On August 25, immigration agents swooped down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run detention center in Jena, Louisiana. A hundred and six women were also arrested at the plant, and released wearing electronic monitoring devices on their ankles, if they had children, or without them, if they were pregnant. Eight workers were taken to Federal court in Hattiesburg, where they were charged with aggravated identity theft.

Afterwards Barbara Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stated the raid took place because of a tip by a "union member" two years before. Other media accounts focused on an incident in which plant workers allegedly cheered as their coworkers were led away by ICE agents. The articles claim the plant was torn by tension between immigrant and non-immigrant workers, and that unions in Mississippi are hostile to immigrants.

Many Mississippi activists and workers, however, charge the raid had a political agenda - undermining a growing political coalition that threatens the state's conservative Republican establishment. They also say the raid, which took place during union contract negotiations, will help the company resist demands for better wages and conditions.

Jim Evans, a national AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi and a leading member of the state legislature's Black Caucus, said he believed "this raid is an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi. It is also an attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants, African Americans, white people and unions - all those who want political change here." Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), agreed that "this is political. They want a mass exodus of immigrants out of the state, the kind we've seen in Arizona and Oklahoma. The political establishment here is threatened by Mississippi's changing demographics, and what the electorate might look like in 20 years."

In the last two decades, the percentage of African Americans in the state's population has increased to over 35%, and immigrants, who were statistically insignificant until recently, are expected to reach 10% in the next decade. Mississippi union membership has been among the nation's lowest, but since the early 1980s, workers have joined unions in catfish and poultry plants, casinos and shipyards, along with those at Howard Industries.

Evans, other members of the Black Caucus, many of the state's labor organizations, and immigrant communities all see shifting demographics as the basis for changing the state's politics. Over the last seven years their growing coalition has proposed legislation to set up a Department of Labor (Mississippi is the only state without one), guarantee access to education for children of all races and nationalities, and provide drivers' licenses to immigrants. MIRA organized support in the state capitol for those proposals and Evans, who sponsored many of them, chairs MIRA's board.

Earlier this year, however, the legislature passed, and Governor Haley Barbour signed, a law making it a state felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, punishable by 1-5 years in prison and $1,000-10,000 in fines. Employers are given immunity for employing workers without papers, so long as they vet new hires through an ICE database called E-Verify. It is still not known whether the people arrested at Howard Industries will be charged under the new state law. Evans says the law and the raid serve the same objectives. "They both just make it easier to exploit workers. The people who profit from Mississippi's low wage system want to keep it the way it is," he alleged.

In the week before the raid, MIRA organizers received reports of a growing number of ICE agents in southern Mississippi. They began leafleting immigrant communities, warning them about a possible raid and explaining their rights should people be questioned about their immigration status. When agents finally showed up at the Howard Industries plant, many workers say they tried to invoke those rights, and warn others that a raid was in progress. One woman, later detained and then released to care for her child, began to call workers who had not yet come to the factory on her cell phone, warning them to stay away. "She first called her brother, and then began calling anyone else she could think of," explained her mother, who works in a local chicken plant. Both feared being identified publicly. "An agent grabbed her arm, and asked her what she was doing, so she went into the bathroom, and kept calling people until they took her phone away."

Howard Industries, like most Mississippi employers, has a long record of opposing unions. Workers there chose representation by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on June 8, 2000, by a vote of 162-108. Employment at the plant, which manufactures electrical ballasts and transformers, grew considerably after the election, and the company now employs over 4000 workers at several locations in Mississippi. In 2002 it received a $31.5 million subsidy for expansion from the state government, and at one point state legislators were all given HI laptop computers. "The company is very well-connected politically," says Evans, who noted that its owners donated to the campaigns of former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove, and then to Mississippi's current Republican governor Haley Barbour.

As it grew the company hired many immigrant Mexican and Central American workers, diversifying a workforce that was originally primarily African American and white. The company has declined to comment, and released a press statement that said, "Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs. It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants."

During the organizing drive the union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging intimidation and violations of workers' rights. After the union and company agreed on a contract, more charges followed. NLRB Region 15 issued a complaint against the company for violating the union's bargaining rights. Roger Doolittle, attorney for IBEW Local 1317, says other charges allege that the company threatened a union steward for trying to represent workers in the plant. In June the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it intended to fine the company $123,000 for 36 violations of health and safety regulations at the Pendorf plant, where the raid took place, and another $41,000 in fines for a second Laurel location.

Tension between the company and union increased after the collective bargaining agreement expired at the beginning of August. According to one immigrant worker, who was not detained because he worked on swing shift and did not want to be identified, the union was asking for a wage increase of $1.50/hour and better vacation benefits. Company medical benefits are also an issue among workers, he said, because family coverage costs over $100/week, putting it out of reach for most employees.

Mississippi is a right-to-work state, and labor contracts cannot require that workers belong to the union. Instead, unions must continually try to sign workers up as members. In past years, according to other union sources, IBEW Local 1317 had a reputation as a union that did not offer much support to its immigrant members.
According to the swing shift worker, who did not belong to the union, there were just a few hundred members at the Pendorf plant, and in negotiations the company used that low membership as a reason not to sign a new agreement.

To increase its ability to negotiate a contract, Local 1317 began making greater efforts to sign up immigrant members. Spanish-speaking organizers were brought in, and they handed out leaflets in Spanish explaining the benefits of membership. They visited workers at home so they could talk about the union without being overheard or seen by company supervisors. According to the swing shift worker, many began to join, especially the immigrants who'd been hired most recently. IBEW's national newspaper, Electrical Worker, reported that over 200 had signed up last April, according to Local 1317's African-American business manager Clarence Larkin. "It's a constant process to keep the union alive and growing," he told the paper.

That's when the plant was raided. Local 1317 will now have to try to negotiate a contract after the loss of many of its members, who were among those detained. Those members, who joined the union in hopes of better wages and treatment, instead have been imprisoned for days in Jena, Louisiana, a two-hour drive from Laurel. ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez would not provide an estimate of how long they might be jailed, but said "the investigation of their cases is ongoing."

The day after ICE agents stormed the factory MIRA began organizing meetings to provide legal advice, food and economic help. According to MIRA director Bill Chandler, Howard Industry representatives told detainees' families, and women released to care for children, that the company wouldn't give them their paychecks. On August 28 MIRA organizer Vicky Cintra led a group of workers to the Pendorf plant to demand their pay. Managers called Laurel police and sheriffs, who threatened to arrest her. After workers began chanting, "Let her go!" and news reporters appeared on the scene, the company finally agreed to distribute checks to about 70 people.

The swing shift worker was so frightened by the raid that he hadn't gone back to work after almost a week, and wasn't sure he'd have a job waiting if he did. "Everyone is still really scared," he said. Doolittle agreed, and said that fear would affect more than just the workers taken away. "Workers get apprehensive anytime something like this happens," he said. "That's just human nature."

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, explained that "raids drive down wages because they intimidate workers, even citizens and legal residents. The employer brings in another batch of employees and continues business as usual, while people who protest get targeted and workers get deported. Raids really demonstrate the employer's power." The Hattiesburg American reported Friday that Howard Industries sent a letter to customers two days after the raid, assuring them that production would be back to normal by the end of the week, and noting that the company has not been charged.

Spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez claimed ICE waited two years after receiving a call from a "union member" before conducting the raid, because "we took the time needed for our investigation." She declined to say how that investigation was conducted, or what led ICE to believe their tip had come from a union member. The picture of a plant in which union members were hostile to immigrants was reinforced after the raid by media accounts of an incident in which workers "applauded" as their coworkers were taken away. But on August 29, when Cintra and the braceleted women sat in front of the plant for a second day, demanding more paychecks, African American workers came up to them as they left work, embraced the women, and told them they supported them.

"It's hard to believe that a two-year old phone call to ICE led to this raid, but whether or not the call ever took place, that possibility is a product of the poisonous atmosphere fostered by politicians of both parties in Mississippi," says MIRA director Chandler. "In the last election Barbour and Republicans campaigned against immigrants to get elected, but so did all the Democratic statewide candidates except Attorney General Jim Hood. The raid will make the climate even worse"

During the 2007 election campaign the Ku Klux Klan organized a 500-person rally in Tupelo, and when MIRA organizer Erik Fleming urged Barbour to veto the bill making work a felony for the undocumented, he was attacked by state anti-immigrant organizations.

Some state labor leaders have contributed to anti-immigrant hostility. After the Howard Industries workers, many of them union members, were arrested, state AFL-CIO President Robert Shaffer told the Associated Press that he doubted that immigrants could join unions if they were not in the country legally. U.S. labor law, however, holds that all workers have union rights, regardless of immigration status. It also says unions have a duty to represent all members fairly and equally

"This raid will just make us more determined," Evans declared. "We won't go back to the kind of racism Mississippi has known throughout its past."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more articles and images on immigration, see http://dbacon.igc.org/Imgrants/imgrants.htm


Just out from Beacon Press:
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002


See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575


See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

A Small Immigrant Town Simmers in the Wake Of a Brutal Murder

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; C01

SHENANDOAH, Pa.

Of all the stories this tough little coal town has to tell -- stories of industrial might, bloody strikes, black lungs; stories of Friday night football, Saturday night drinking, Sunday morning praying; and now, the story of a sensational murder -- its favorite tale unfolds on a Saturday every August.

This is Heritage Day, when Shenandoah celebrates what it considers one of the best things it's still got going, besides the high school
football team: the story of how for 150 years the community has
embraced succeeding generations of immigrants. The highlight of
Heritage Day is the Parade of Nations. Descendants of each nationality in the town of 5,600 line up, alphabetically, on Jardin Street for the procession up Main Street.

"We have 18, if everybody shows up," says grand marshal Val MacDonald, clad in 20the plaid of her Scottish clan. "Here's my China. There are the Bulgarians."

The Germans wearing bonnets and broad-brim hats stand in patient
ranks. Polkas blaring from the Lithuanians' gold Chevy convertible
compete with rancheras pumping from the Mexicans' red Chevy truck.

The Mexicans! Everyone keeps an eye on the Mexicans, luminous in their shiny cowboy boots, swirling folk dresses, white suits and sombreros.

Not everyone was sure the Mexicans would attend this year. Not after
the brawl that got out of hand -- as non-Latinos refer to what
happened one Saturday night in July. Not after a popular group of
current and former high school football players beat Luis Eduardo
Ramirez to death because he was a Mexican immigrant -- as Latinos
summarize recent events.

It's been a brutal summer: families grieving, clean-cut local sons
charged with murder and "ethnic intimidation, " the Justice Department conducting its own investigation, big-city activists riding from over the hills like rival cavalries to conduct dueling demonstrations. And the beloved Blue Devils of the Anthracite Football League are forced to play with a depleted roster, owing to the criminal charges against three current or former players.

"It's a quiet town. Well, it was, until they murdered the Mexican,"
says Kitty Merrick, the widow of an Irish American, whose maiden name, Glabyte, places her in the Lithuan ian parade contingent.

The death of Ramirez, 25, threatened to undermine not just Heritage
Day, but Shenandoah's hard-earned idea of itself. This difficult
summer, it would be tough to find a more apt microcosm of the entire
imperfect nation of immigrants than little Shenandoah, struggling to
realize its ideals and reconcile its ironies.

The non-Hispanics lining Main Street applaud with more than mere
politeness as the dozen Mexican marchers come along.

"This is a special day when we are allowed to express our feelings
more than other days," Macario Velazquez says in Spanish. He's a
maintenance caretaker at Annunciation Church, the Irish parish where
the noon Mass is celebrated in Spanish.

On Heritage Day, says Velazquez, it's all right to wave a Mexican
flag, play music in Spanish, shout "¡Viva Mexico!" and "¡Andale!" in
public.

But not every day is Heritage Day.
An Immigrant Legacy

Shenandoah -- pronounced "Shen-Doe" by residents -- is a square mile
of tightly packed rowhouses and church spires set in the green and
black hills of coal country west of Allentown. Nobody's had it easy
here, since the first hunk of hard anthracite was discovered in the
mid-1800s.

The English, Scotch and Welsh arrived first and ran the show. The
Germans and Irish followed and got stuck with the worst jobs, until
they dominated, and then it was the t urn of the Poles, Lithuanians,
Ukrainians, Slovakians, Italians, Jews, Syrians and Lebanese to elbow in. Few people of African descent ever lived in Shenandoah.

An initial adjustment period was always followed by acceptance, then
intermarriage, though the ethnic groups tended to cluster in their own neighborhoods, places of worship, cemeteries and sometimes even their own volunteer fire companies.

The first dozen or so Mexicans arrived in the late 1980s, long after
most mines had closed and the town was skidding into economic hard
times. They came to farm Christmas trees. They lived in the former
convent of the Lithuanian parish.

Even counting the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans who moved from New York for the small-town atmosphere and the rock-bottom real estate prices, the Latino share of the population is small, perhaps 10 percent, compared with other parts of post-industrial Pennsylvania, such as Reading, where Latinos are the new majority.

Ramirez grew up in a poor farming and fishing town in the Mexican
state of Guanajuato. He crossed the border illegally. After getting
caught and deported once by immigration authorities in the Southwest, according to friends, he made it to Shenandoah in 2003 and got a job in a greenhouse. It was hot, heavy work for $6.50 an hour. The way he
pulled the heavy rail carts that conveyed flats of flowers in the
greenhouse reminded his friends of a horse, so they nicknamed him El
Caballo, or the horse. Most recently he held two jobs -- in a potato
chip factory and a fruit orchard.

About three years ago, through friends, Ramirez met Crystal Dillman,
now 24. She grew up around Shenandoah, the granddaughter of a coal
miner. The couple had ups and downs and separations, but they also had
two children, Kiara, now 2, and Eduardo, 1. Dillman also had a
daughter by a previous relationship, Anjelina, who was just an infant
when they met.

"What I saw in him was the fact he was very nice and respectful,"
Dillman says. "He took over being her father. I didn't ask him. From
Day One he was there for her. That really drew me to him."

For the Parade of Nations, six weeks after Ramirez's death, Dillman
dressed the children in Mexican red, green and white.
A Deadly 'Rumble'

What exactly happened on Saturday, July 12, is disputed by prosecutors and lawyers for the three young men who have been charged in the killing. Prosecutors paint a picture of murder and ethnic hatred; defense attorneys describe a fight with tragic but unintentional results.

According to charging documents and witness testimony at a preliminary hearing in the Schuylkill County courthouse, events unfolded like this:

After supper, Ramirez went out without telling Dillman where. He spent some time with friends -- a young married couple and Dillman's 15-year-old half sister.

Around 11:30 p.m., the couple gave Ramirez and the girl a ride to the Vine Street Park, a patch overlooking the high school and across from the football stadium. Ramirez had been drinking.

A few hours earlier, several current or former members of the football team met in the nearby woods where one of them had stashed a box of 1240-ounce bottles of Mickey's malt liquor. Several drank, and one said he polished off two bottles.

They visited the Polish American Fire Co. block party, and then a
group of six started walking toward the park. They saw the girl, whom some recognized from school, before they saw Ramirez.

"Isn't it a little late for you to be out?" called out Brian Scully, a
running back going into his senior year.

Ramirez came into view and shouted something in Spanish. The words
sounded unfriendly to Ben Lawson, 17, a defensive back, who testified
against his teammates. But Lawson didn't know for sure what Ramirez
said because he does not understand Spanish.

Then Scully hollered: "This is Shenandoah!" "This is America!" "Go
back to Mexico!"

Brandon Piekarsky, 16, a wide receiver and honors student, started
exchanging punches with Ramirez. Then Derrick Donchak, 18, the
quarterback who graduated last spring, joined in.

Ramirez fell and Donchak landed on top of him. A group of th ree
players stood around Ramirez, kicking him.

Ramirez got to his feet. There was a confusing "rumble" with punches
flying, Lawson testified. The end came when Ramirez had his attention
on Donchak, when Colin Walsh, 17, a linebacker and straight-A student,
landed a surprise blow to his face. Ramirez went down hard, his head
thumping on the pavement. While he was down, Piekarsky kicked him near
the left temple.

Ramirez, unconscious, started foaming at the mouth and "bouncing off
the road" with violent convulsions, testified Eileen Burke, a retired
Philadelphia police officer who had come outside her house at the
sound of the commotion.

Ramirez went into a coma and died two days later.

Thirteen days later, Piekarsky and Walsh were charged as adults with
third-degree murder, ethnic intimidation (Pennsylvania' s term for a
hate crime) and other crimes. Donchak was charged with aggravated
assault, ethnic intimidation and other crimes. Charges are pending
against another juvenile, according to District Attorney James Goodman.

That night, as the young men scattered, according to Burke, Piekarsky
shouted a final warning to one of Ramirez's two female friends by then
on the scene: "You [expletive] bitch! You tell your [expletive]
Mexican friends to get the [expletive] out of Shenandoah or you're
going to be laying [expletive] next to him!"
In the Aftermath

The words make Shenandoah wince, Latinos and non-Latinos alike. They
suggest a context for the violence. But what do they mean? Is
Shenandoah a racist place, its immigrants' pride and promise a cruel
fraud?

Piekarsky and Walsh were held in the county prison, the same castle
where 130 years ago alleged members of the Molly Maguires, the secret
militant Irish miners' group, were hanged on dubious charges. The two
were led in shackles into the courtroom packed with their family and
friends, and the teenage girls filling one bench burst into tears.

Dillman sat in the front row, sobbing quietly. Her lone companion was
an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

"Here we go again," Roger Laguna, Walsh's attorney, said later. "Hang
'em all, and 50 years from now we'll figure out maybe we should have
slowed down and demanded some facts or demanded some evidence."
Laguna, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, grew up around Reading
where he says he heard the term "spic" in plenty of playground fights.
"When people fight they call each other names," he said. "This fight
was not racially motivated simply because someone used racial terms."

The young men's attorneys challenge the credibility of witnesses and
their ability to pinpoint who said what and who landed which blows.
They also argue that Ramirez was an aggressor who kept the fight going
longer than it might have lasted.

It wasn't murder, "this was mutual combat," Piekarsky's attorney,
Frederick Fanelli, said in court. No trial date has been set. (The
families of the three accused did not respond to interview requests.)

Homicide in a small town is a tragedy with multiple roles for everybody.

Among the first Shenandoah police officers on the scene were one who
is a friend of Piekarsky's mother and another who is the father of a
teammate, according to a witness and local officials. Police knew
within hours who was involved but arrested no one for nearly two weeks.

The day after the beating, most of the players and at least some of
their parents went to Piekarsky's house. "We made up a plan that we
were going to tell the cops," Lawson testified. "That nobody kicked
him. There was no racial slurs. There was no booze. And Brian [Scully]
got hit first."
Shades of Tolerance

Outside the courthouse, a more complicated question than guilt or
innocence lingers: Does all of this say something larger, darker,
about Shenandoah -- and, by extension, the rest of us?

The soul of an immigrant town is examined, debated, prayed over in a
hundred locations within the intimate square mile, from Mrs. T's
Pierogies at one end to the crime scene and the football stadium at
the other.

"I don't think very many people say there is no prejudice here," says
=0 AMindy Heppe, pastor of the historically German St. John's Evangelical
Lutheran Church. "On the other hand, I don't think you can call it a
polarized community. I think you could say there are parallel
communities with very little overlap." She is leading an effort to
have everyone make a flag expressing unity.

"These kids are not bad kids," says Joe Sobinsky, a bus driver at the high school. "They're normal coal region kids. They got in a fight and people got hurt." Sobinsky tells the Latino kids on his bus not to
speak Spanish because non-Latinos think they're talking about them.
Once a Latino sophomore told him, "You're picking on me because I'm
brown!" Sobinsky pointed to the Polish Italian olive hue of his own
skin and said: "Before you got here I was the brownest. So you got two
shades on me -- now get back in line!"

Sobinsky offers Shenandoah's highest praise to that parallel
community: "The Mexicans are the hardest-working people I've ever seen
in my life. They're from an old country. That's how our grandparents
were." The same themes are discussed inside the parallel community --
on front porches where families relax and chat in Spanish, at the
Spanish Mass where they pray for tolerance, in the handful of Latino
businesses that have opened among the empty storefronts.

Different conclusions are reached. Yet the feelings about Shenandoah
are complicated.

"Mo st of the young people cause problems for Hispanics," Jorge Perez,
owner of La Guadalupana market, says in Spanish. "They don't get along
with us."

He has lived in Shenandoah for two decades. "There are people who
criticize you for coming from another country," he says. "Sometimes
you don't want to argue with them. . . . They want to provoke us to go
from Shenandoah."

He keeps a collection box on the counter to raise funds for the family
of the man he knew as El Caballo. Ramirez's swollen face in his
hospital bed fills the cover of a Spanish-language newspaper on a shelf.

"The community is a little intimidated, " Perez says. "You're afraid it
might happen to you."

"If these kids go to jail, everything will be okay," says Felix
Bermejo, a Puerto Rican attending church services in Spanish, in the
tradition of local churches that used to celebrate in German, Polish
and Italian. "If they don't go to jail, or they get out in six months
or a year, there's going to be a lot of trouble."

The Latinos are shocked that the events of July 12 passed so far
beyond the frequent hurtful words and suspicious looks. Lethal
violence is not part of the Shenandoah they still appreciate, on some
level.

"Thank God, and this country, we have the little we do have," says
Perez, who recently wired $600 to his family in Mexico to buy seeds
for=2 0their farm. "There are Americans who are very special and very
good" in Shenandoah.

But to survive in Shenandoah, the Latinos learn to take precautions.
They avoid appearing on Main Street after dark. The strip is the
province of non-Latino teens and 20-somethings who loiter in large
groups outside the pizza restaurants. It's sometimes referred to as
the "jock block."

Unlike the out-of-town Latino activists, the Latinos of Shenandoah are
not the demonstrating kind. They settle for invisibility, except on
Heritage Day.

"When things happen, you keep quiet," Perez says.
Fragile Roots

The Blue Devils lost their first game, 19-6, last Friday night.

The names in the huddle (Semanchik, Whalen, Polosky, Sadja,
Amberlavage) conjure the same old countries as the names on the Miners
Memorial at the top of Main Street and the names on the tombstones dug
into the bluff overlooking the town.

The generations came, and they worked and played and then they died --
and then for half a century after the coal business died, they stopped
coming. Maybe Shenandoah forgot how to handle the truly new.

The Latinos haven't been here long enough to fill a burial ground yet,
nor claim many spots on the football team. Their new roots are
fragile, their identity in transition. Ramirez's body was sent back to
his mother in Mexico -- with financial help from the Irish and Italian
parishes in Shenandoah. His favorite white Michigan State baseball cap
was placed on his head to cover the scars.

"I really thought it was so ironic when I saw this thing in the news,
because I've always talked about Shenandoah as a model of the American
melting pot," says poet Joseph Awad, whose Lebanese and Irish
grandfathers worked in the mines, and who once was grand marshal of
the Parade of Nations.

"Let's not say we're having a lovefest with one another," says Dennis
Yezulinas, Lithuanian on his father's side, Irish on his mother's,
sipping coffee on Main Street. He makes doors for a living. "We never
did have a lovefest here in Shenandoah. It's people trying to get by,
in a low-income blue-collar area, the best way they know how."

© 2008 The Washington Post Company