Greenfield's Older Immigrants Hostile To Recent Migrants

[Ayatollahgondola]

Ha! Ain't this a kick?
Longer term Latino immigrants taking issue with newly arrived migrant farm workers and their betheren in a California town. They sound just like us too. Who would have guessed that immigration control proponents are not just white and black....

I'm going to publis a wee bit more of the article than normally allowed by copyright law because the issue is so closely connected to our cause. But there is lots more to it

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/13/383...an-divide.html

Ortiz and others in newly-formed community groups complained that the Oaxacan families clustered in overcrowded apartments and garages, threw trash into the streets, thronged city parks, held loud parties. Some urinated in public and were involved in break-ins.

"It's fine when you live over there in Oaxaca," said Ortiz, 53, whose grandfather came from Mexico. "But here things are done differently. Here you have to maintain your home, your children, your job and yourself."

Ortiz, who works for a seed company on the edge of town, helped form "Beautify Greenfield." The group's goal was to clean up graffiti, trash and weeds. Its members decried the dilapidated apartment complexes scattered among neatly trimmed lawns and modest homes, the boarded-up windows splashed with gang insignia and rows of foreclosed homes.

Members of the group and its offshoot, "Save Greenfield," quickly pushed into city politics. They took to city council meetings, social media sites and local newspapers to air a series of escalating grievances against the Oaxacans.

Among Beautify Greenfield's charges: The new migrants ruined the town financially, "destroyed" its school system, caused violent crimes and were part of gangs, which are pervasive in the Salinas Valley. The migrants, "invaders from the south," should be deported.

The community groups were, in turn, labeled racist by the press and migrant leaders.