Thousands of Prince William County, Va., LEGAL homeowners are saying
"Thank God!" as hundreds of ILLEGAL dirtbags flee the county in the
wake of the nation's toughest crackdown on predatory, law-breaking,
unsanitary, and downright grimy, ugly and fat Mexicans and other
Latinos who were living up to 25 to a house!
With nearly 800 foreclosed houses in just one county community, Dale
City, law-abiding residents are reporting a drastic dropoff in public
urination, trash-strewn yards and streets, cars parked on lawns, loud
music and drunken spics, fights, and crime in general.
And though empty houses are not the best sign of the vitality of a
neighborhood, decent, clean, respectful homeowners are collectively
exhaling sighs of relief now that their scrubby illegal squatters are
gone.
Manassas legals are overjoyed!
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"A New View of Vacant Houses"
"Immigrant Crackdown Changing Block for the Better, Pr. William Pair
Say"
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008; B01
When Chris Pannell walks down the Prince William County street she has
called home for all of her 39 years, she's dismayed by what she sees
-- vacant houses -- and delighted by what she says she doesn't see --
illegal immigrants.
"I will take coming down here and looking at 10 empty houses any day
over what we had before," says Pannell, a title examiner, as she and
her neighbor, Allison Kipp, 42, amble past lifeless houses.
This stretch of Lafayette Avenue in the Manassas area is a fairly
gloomy scene. "For Sale" signs flap outside two of the 30 1960s-era
red brick starter homes on the block. Eight others appear to be
vacant. Few cars are parked on the street. The worn sidewalks are
deserted.
But to Pannell and Kipp, it is a tableau of hope. And victory.
For much of the past decade, according to the women and other
neighbors, parking was bumper-to-bumper and most of the empty houses
were packed with Latino residents they believe were in the country
illegally. Now Pannell and Kipp are convinced that Prince William's
illegal-immigration crackdown, which both championed as first-time
activists, has helped flush many of those people out of their
neighborhood, West Gate.
The experiences that hardened their attitude and the relief they now
feel have been voiced by many Prince William residents who bridled at
the influx of immigrants, many of whom they suspected were here
illegally, according to activist leaders.
"A year ago, it was common to have several overcrowded residences on
every block around here," said Greg Letiecq, president of Help Save
Manassas, an anti-illegal immigration group. "The turnaround has been
dramatic. People started calling me and telling me, 'This overcrowded
house is now vacant.' 'That overcrowded house is now vacant.' A lot of
people prefer a quiet neighborhood and empty houses to overcrowded
ones any day."
Prince William Board of County Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr. (R-
Gainesville), who represents West Gate, introduced the measures, which
deny some services to illegal residents and require police to check
the immigration status of suspects they believe are in the company
illegally, after what he called an outcry from constituents. He said
he now sees their worries being relieved.
"We're clearly getting reports on a regular basis from people who had
seen the quality of life declining in the past," he said, "and now
they are reporting back to say obviously this is working, this element
has left the community."
People on both sides of Prince William's illegal-immigration debate
say Latino immigrants are leaving the county. Evidence is anecdotal,
and so far it is impossible to measure the migration or whether it is
driven by tough laws, economic downturn or the wave of mortgage
foreclosures. Yet where opponents of the crackdown predict the ruin of
the county's finances and culture via mean-spirited policy, such
supporters as Pannell and Kipp envision a neighborhood rebirth rooted
in simple democracy.
"It really gave me faith in the American way, that we the American
people can get out here, and our voices will prevail," said Pannell,
who lives with her husband and three children in the house across the
street from her childhood home, where her mother still lives. "I've
never felt so passionate about anything. It's your neighborhood. It's
your community."
The county's stance, said Kipp, a paralegal who has lived on nearby
Loudoun Avenue half her life, "has given us faith in politicians."
Their logic rings hollow to critics of the policy, who say it has also
scared away single-family immigrant households who contributed to
their neighborhoods.
"The resolution was motivated by people who, as we have said all
along, would like to see Prince William County much less diverse,"
said Nancy Lyall of the advocacy group Mexicans Without Borders. "It's
shocking to me and many people that there are people in this community
that would rather live next to a vacant house than next to a house
with an immigrant family. That is a perfect example of the racism in
this county."
Pannell and Kipp, who were strangers a year ago, scoff at the
suggestion that they are racists and say most of those who left were
not single families. As a light rain fell one spring afternoon, they
strolled along Lafayette, smoking cigarettes and collecting the
yellowed newspapers that dotted driveways. The women stopped in front
of a house with a mailbox shaped like a barn. By Pannell's count (she
says she zealously tracks the block's comings and goings), a family
with six children and five single men lived there until vanishing
nearly two months ago.
Next door was a foreclosed house that Pannell said was filled for a
decade with Hispanic men who frequently spent afternoons drinking on
the front stoop and in the beds of pickups. She said she witnessed
several brawls and saw men urinate in the front yard at least 10 times
over the years. The inhabitants disappeared more than three months
ago, she said, "and that's a good thing."
Other residents, who are not activists, said they also felt relieved
that the worst of street's overcrowding appears to have subsided.
Kipp and Pannell acknowledge that they have no proof that the houses'
occupants were illegal immigrants or that the county's resolution
drove them away. But as they see it, legal immigrants would not move
in and out in the middle of the night and would respect laws, so they
would not break zoning regulations prohibiting such things as over-
occupancy and blocking driveways. They don't believe that the general
mortgage problem is to blame, because if anyone could keep up with a
mortgage, the women figure, it would be a house full of people paying
a few hundred dollars each.
"I have no doubt in my mind that these houses that are overcrowded are
full of illegal aliens," said Kipp, who lives in her childhood home
with her husband and four of their five children. "None."
Their neighborhood is a collection of modest houses built from four
models (two with a front steps, one with a porch, the other with
columns) in one of the region's Zip codes hardest hit by foreclosures.
As Pannell and Kipp walked along the street, five houses were in some
stage of foreclosure, according to the research firm RealtyTrac.
Kipp and Pannell describe the West Gate of their youth in halcyon
terms. Doors were left unlocked, and children played outside until the
streetlights dimmed. But they say it was always open-minded . When an
influx of Cambodian refugees arrived in the area in the late 1970s,
neighborhood organizations held toy and clothing drives, they said.
Kipp said her brother's best childhood friends were black. One of
Pannell's favorite neighbors was a Guatemalan woman, who moved away
two years ago.
"They were welcome and invited," Pannell said of the Cambodians.
"That's not what's happening today."
Change came over the past decade, they and other neighbors said.
Single families left, and into their homes moved what appeared to be
various unrelated Latinos. People came and went at all hours. Trash
piled up, and grass went uncut.
Back then, neither Kipp nor Pannell paid any attention to news or
politics, they said. They say they figured the new neighbors were
illegal immigrants, but they also assumed that police were checking
immigration status.
Then last year, each heard about a Senate bill that would have led to
the legalization of many immigrants. Enraged, Kipp skipped work to
send a letter of protest to every member of Congress. Pannell also
began writing.
They became friends at the county board meetings each began attending
and speaking at last summer. Kipp and Pannell were thrilled when the
county's illegal-immigration resolution passed in July, even as
opponents warned that the policy would divide immigrant families.
"We don't worry about the family of someone who's robbed a bank," Kipp
said. "They knew the consequences."
"They say we're breaking up families," Pannell said. "No, they are."
Now Pannell and Kipp take "field trips" around West Gate, snapping
photos of suspected zoning violations, which they report to the
county. They have been regulars at meetings of Help Save Manassas,
whose members shared their sense of triumph at a recent gathering.
One woman reported that a Wal-Mart was "empty" post-crackdown. Another
said she "actually got someone who speaks English" at a drive-through.
"We took what was an impossible task in so many people's eyes and
within a period of a year fixed it," Letiecq told about 30 people at
Manassas City Hall. Illegal immigrants, he said, are "getting the
message, and they're leaving."
Some of those observations might boil down to perception. Kipp,
Pannell and some of their neighbors cited drops in lines and Latinos
at the Prince William Hospital emergency room and the neighborhood
post office. Donna Ballou, a hospital spokeswoman, said traffic at the
emergency room has remained steady. Patrick Murphy, a spokesman for
the U.S. Postal Service, said the Manassas branch had reported no
decline in customers or revenue.
Back on Lafayette, change is clear, even if the reasons behind it are
not. Pannell and Kipp walked by a darkened house with a large addition
off the back and a "For Sale" sign out front. It housed about a dozen
people, Pannell said.
"They would play music so loud -- mariachi," Pannell said. So loud,
she said, that it would trigger the car alarm of the longtime resident
next door, who would let the alarm ring to annoy the mariachi
listeners.
"This house I could write a book on," Pannell said wearily,
approaching a white house a massive paved driveway, which she said was
crammed with as many as 11 cars a few months back. "There could easily
have been 25 people here at one time. All men. Not a child. Not a
female."
Now it is for sale.
The women walked up Pannell's front path, past her burgundy sport-
utility vehicle with the stickers reading "Sudley Springs, Virginia
20109 Is For Lovers" and "Where's the Fence?" Inside, Kipp sat on the
living room carpet, while Pannell settled into the plush sofa.
They said they feel sure the county will recoup the cost of the
crackdown through savings on social services and English instruction
for immigrant children. Quality of life will improve, Pannell said,
"and you can't put a price on that."
When Pannell looks out her window at the house next to her mother's,
she said she sees the beginnings.
Before the house was foreclosed on in the summer, Pannell said, about
20 single men lived there, one of whom she said she saw urinate on the
front lawn one Saturday afternoon three years ago as her daughter and
stepdaughter played across the street.
Recently, a single man moved in. "An insurance agent," Pannell said
approvingly. She and Kipp hope teachers and firefighters will follow.
"This was not an election-year gimmick. . . . This was us demanding,"
Kipp said. "You have to start small. And we knew we could do something
here."
"It might not be the biggest or the best plan," Pannell said.
"But it's working," Kipp said.
"It's working," Pannell echoed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042002136
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