Hoover council meeting gets ugly
Resource center to close Aug. 15
By DANIEL CONNOLLY
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD
The discussion in the Hoover City Council chambers was about a center for immigrants. But the talk focused on broader themes of illegal immigration and day labor.
Outside, immigrants were waiting for a decision. It came. The council voted and people filed out into the warm evening air. The news spread slowly among roughly 25 day laborers, many of whom don't speak English.
One man asked Miriam Villanueva what had happened. "Perdimos," the center volunteer said, which means "We lost."
On Monday night, the City Council voted 6-1 to end its contract with Catholic Family Services to run the Multicultural Resource Center on city property. The center will close Aug. 15.
Councilman Mike G. Natter cast the "no" vote, saying that the center was necessary and that Catholic Family services had become "the scapegoat for all this hate."
Hoover has experienced a wave of immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries. One of the most visible indicators of the trend is the groups of men who wait for hourly or daily jobs in construction, landscaping and other fields.
The city had set up the Multicultural Resource Center in 2003 to serve two purposes: to provide services such as English classes and health services to immigrants and to put a damper on the uncontrolled day labor market that flourished on Hoover's Lorna Road by setting up a place where the practice would be tolerated. The city paid heating and cooling expenses and the other costs were picked up by charity.
But things didn't go as planned. Day laborers still waited on street corners despite admonitions to go to the center on city property. And last fall, voters threw out the mayor and all but one of the City Council members. New Mayor Tony Petelos ran on an anti-illegal immigrant platform. As Monday night's vote showed, many of the council members shared his feelings.
"If it were just a multicultural center, there wouldn't be a problem," council member Trey D. Lott said. "That's never been the problem. The problem has been that it's a hub for illegal activity, illegal commerce and illegal aliens."
Many of the day laborers have acknowledged in interviews that they're in the country illegally. But immigration enforcement is rare in Alabama, and police chiefs have said immigration agents are vastly understaffed. That leaves local and state governments to deal with the issue most of the time.
It's unclear what will happen after the center closes. Shirley Worthington of the United Way of Central Alabama asked the council for more time, saying social services would look for new ways to provide services for immigrants.
She also suggested that local charities would take the center elsewhere. "We will look for an alternative setting," she said.
Day laborer Juan Samano Gonzalez said he had been using the center to meet employers and to start studying English and seek medical care. He said he's supporting five children and a wife in Acambay, Mexico, an area believed to have sent thousands of immigrants to the area.
Samano Gonzalez said he didn't want the center to close and wasn't sure what he'd do when it does.
"I don't know what to do or where to look for work," he said.
He expressed hope that there would be another center opened elsewhere, an idea that was floated at the meeting.
His nephew, Sergio Alvarez, 20, was concerned about trying to find day labor jobs from the street.
"It's bad because we won't have any place to wait for now. If we stand on a corner ... there's problems with the police."
The vote came at the end of a contentious council meeting that featured jeers, catcalls and frequent applause in support for both sides. One anti-illegal immigrant speaker cried, "Remember the Alamo!," a reference to the bloody battle of the Texas Revolution where many Texans died at the hands of Mexicans.
The room was packed, with about 160 people in the seats and roughly 40 more standing along the walls. Most people in the room were white, although there were a few Hispanics in the room, including a man whom the day laborers had chosen as their representative. He didn't speak at the meeting.
Dr. Hernan Moreno of the health organization Buena Salud called for the council to put off a decision.
He said it was unrealistic to put more of the burden for caring for immigrants on local churches. And he acknowledged that many people using the center entered the U.S. illegally.
"Are you asking us to violate federal law by providing a facility for illegal work?" Councilwoman Mari Morrison asked him at one point.
"If we rounded up and took every person who is in this country illegally, this country would come to an end, finally," he said a moment later.
That drew a roar of catcalls and jeers. "We would have jobs!" a man shouted.
Moreno responded: "It's illegal, but it's something that this country has allowed to happen."
Earlier, he said, "Where do you think they're going to go? It's their necessity, it's their livelihood. They're going to go anywhere they have to go."
The next speaker, Bettie Stone of Hoover, said illegal immigrants are a drain on the government.
"They are sucking off the government and they're doing it willingly, and they're doing it knowingly. And it's not right. We've got to stop it, and this is one way to stop it," she said.
The statement drew whoops and a shout of "Well said!"
The speakers kept coming.
Turner Waide quoted Exodus 22:21 in support of keeping the center open: "For you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt."
At one point, a Hispanic woman approached the podium and said she wanted to speak without giving her name. City officials responded that she had to give her name and address for the record. She wouldn't do so. Soon two uniformed police officers were standing behind her, urging her to move.
"Put her in handcuffs!" someone in the crowd yelled.
She did move, protesting all the way.
Vivian Mora, a broadcaster and liaison for Hispanics, said she was shocked by the tone of the language.
"Some of the comments were like a movie from the '60s," she said.
But one of the council members who voted for the resolution, Morrison, said she's not racist — she studied Spanish and has Hispanic relatives.
Outside the municipal building, day laborer Samano Gonzalez was looking for options. He asked a reporter if he could get him a job at the newspaper. "Even cleaning," he said.
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Hoover council meeting gets ugly
