Diana R. Gordon - Village of Immigrants

Rivergate Regionals

Rivergate Regionals is a collection of books published by Rutgers University Press focusing on New Jersey and the surrounding area. Since its founding in 1936, Rutgers University Press has been devoted to serving the people of New Jersey and this collection solidifies that tradition. The books in the Rivergate Regionals Collection explore history, politics, nature and the environment, recreation, sports, health and medicine, and the arts. By incorporating the collection within the larger Rutgers University Press editorial program, the Rivergate Regionals Collection enhances our commitment to publishing the best books about our great state and the surrounding region.

Diana R. Gordon

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gordon, Diana R.

Village of immigrants: Latinos in an emerging America / Diana R. Gordon.

pages cm. (Rivergate regionals)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780813575902 (hardcover: alkaline paper) ISBN 9780813575919 (ePub) ISBN 9780813575926 (Web PDF)

1. Hispanic AmericansNew York (State)GreenportSocial conditions. 2. ImmigrantsNew York (State)GreenportSocial conditions. 3. Working classNew York (State)GreenportSocial conditions. 4. Hispanic AmericansNew York (State)GreenportBiography. 5. ImmigrantsNew York (State)GreenportBiography. 6. Working classNew York (State)GreenportBiography. 7. Social changeNew York (State)Greenport. 8. Greenport (N.Y.)Ethnic relations. 9. Greenport (N.Y.)Biography. 10. Greenport (N.Y.)Economic conditions. I. Title.

F129.G714G67 2015

305.9069120974721dc23

2015002824

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright 2015 by Diana R. Gordon

All rights reserved

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Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is the result of both personal interest and professional discomfort.

It was not until after I had taught a doctoral course on American immigration policytwicethat I realized I knew almost nothing about how that policy affected the everyday lives of both recent immigrants and the native-born. What did it mean to empower a million new citizens each year and yet leave many times that number of eager and anxious migrants in vulnerable limbo because they had dared to cross our borders illegally or overstay their visas in search of better and freer lives? How were recent arrivals, whether documented or not, coping with the hardships of settlementopportunities for work and education that were often thwarted, a path to citizenship that wound through a bureaucratic bog or was blocked from the start, communities that were ambivalent at best about their presence? And how were those communities, lacking both resources and coherent guidance from the federal government, handling the demandssocial and political as well as materialof a new and needy population? I could not illuminate for my students the daily details that would have turned the history and theory of my classes into rich reality.

Then I moved to Greenport, New York, a village of three thousand people (including about eight hundred second-home owners) on the North Fork of Long Island, ninety miles from New York City. I had known Greenport in another life, but it was then a dilapidated, drug-infested stopover on the way to lovely, nearby Shelter Island. Now, however, it was lively and attractive, worthy of being included in a Forbes feature on Americas Prettiest Towns in 2011. Although I had noticed a Hispanic presence in the supermarket and behind the counter at the pharmacy, I was surprised to discover that Latinos made up a third of the full-time residents in 2010. What were these immigrants doing in a small town, far from the urban hurly-burly that absorbed most European immigrants of the past? Were they part of the renaissance of the village? With few exceptions, they had arrived from Latin American countries since the 1990s and tucked themselves into available rental housing with very little fuss. Most were undocumented and worked in low-wage jobsoften seasonal, as Greenport is a much busier place when the attractions of boating and beaches bring urban visitorswhile sending their children to local schools. Several small businesses owned or managed by Latino immigrants had sprung up and were surviving, perhaps even thriving.

A few months after I became a Greenporter, a terrible thing happened. A group of boys from Patchogue and Medford, small adjoining towns west of Greenport, killed an Ecuadorean man who had lived and worked in the United States for many years. They did not know Marcelo Lucero; he was simply a target, game in the sport of attacking beaners, poor brown-skinned men assumed to be immigrants. This was not the first violent crime committed against a Latino in the area; in fact, Suffolk County had a decade-long history of harassment and worse, spurred by anti-immigrant groups and antagonistic politicians.

Greenport is not far from towns where hostility to recent arrivals is the norm. By contrast, however, it is relatively peaceful. I decided to channel my general curiosity into a particular investigation: how twenty-first-century immigrants in this village were faring in the ambiguous atmosphere of current immigration policy. What interested me most was the ecology of a small town undergoing demographic transformation, the interplay of lives and their surroundings. This meant poking my nose into the business of the institutions that interact with the newcomerseducation, health care, housing, law enforcement, workas well as discovering how the immigrants were handling both obstacles and opportunities they would never have known at home (or in a larger community, perhaps). The results of both kinds of inquiry are on display in the following pages.

Although I was an academic for twenty-five years, this is not a scholarly work. My method is not rigorous and my conclusions, though based on interviews with almost a hundred Greenport residents between 2011 and 2014, are very personal. As I came to know members of the immigrant community in the village, hanging out became more important than structured conversations. I do not pretend to be objective about the contributions that Latino immigrants have made to the revitalization of Greenport; as the former mayor David Kapell says, Theyve saved this town. The rescue may not, however, be permanent; the cautious tolerance of the migrants by typical native-born Greenporters is a fragile adaptation to the globalizing demographics of twenty-first-century America. As a professor, I would have wanted my work to lead to generalizable findings. But this book is a tale of a town, giving glimpses of individuals lives and the forces that shape their trajectories. Perhaps Greenport has something to offer other small towns confronting new and sometimes threatening population shifts; its a situation that many are sharing. I have found both the unique and the universal in the experiences of both immigrants and the native-born. The warp and woof of village life yields patterns as well as irregularities.