Des Moines Register
02/26/06
200 gather to discuss immigration
Unauthorized workers in Marshalltown are both a challenge and
a blessing, speakers say.
WILLIAM PETROSKI
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Marshalltown, Ia. — Immigration is changing the face of Marshalltown, and
community leaders said Saturday that they are committed to helping the
newcomers, although they hope Congress can address issues involving
unauthorized workers.
About 26,000 people live in Marshalltown, and more than 3,200 are immigrants,
mostly from Mexico. The immigrants primarily work in the meatpacking industry,
for construction firms, and in other areas that permit entry-level employment
without higher education.
"We see it every day in our economy," said Ken Anderson, president of the
Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce. "These folks are customers in our
stores and employees in our workplace. We hope immigration law gets it figured
out."
Marshalltown's experience with immigration was the subject of a forum Saturday
sponsored by the Iowa Council for International Understanding. About 200
people attended, including students from about 35 countries who are enrolled in
Iowa's colleges and universities.
The keynote speaker was Patricia Hamm, an Iowa State University political
scientist who came from Mexico to the United States about 25 years ago. She
described Marshalltown as a prototype of Iowa cities affected by large influxes of
immigrants that are mostly from Mexico.
"This is not one of those towns that is slowly slipping into oblivion. On the
contrary, it is very dynamic," Hamm said. She said no one knows for certain how
many unauthorized immigrant workers live in the United States.
Hamm outlined several bills pending before Congress involving unauthorized
immigrants, both the people who enter the United States clandestinely or those
who overstay their visas issued for work, school, or other reasons. She described
proposals for solutions ranging from guest worker programs to simply barricading
the nation's borders.
"There is massive immigration to the United States because there is a demand
for these workers," Hamm said. "My analysis tells me that we are not going to be
able to do anything about unauthorized immigration unless we deal with the
factors that cause it."
Chamber President Anderson said the congressional debate about illegal
immigration appears to be "like closing the gate after the horses are out of the
corral. . . . You have immigration that has just blown past immigration law."
John Cahill, an administrator at the Marshalltown Medical and Surgical Center,
said it's common to hear local coffee shop talk where patrons discuss those
"damn immigrants."
But those same critics will also say, "Carlos and Maria are my friends and
neighbors, and they are not the ones we are talking about," Cahill added.
Many of the newcomers are between 18 and 35 years old, prompting a need for
obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians because the immigrants are
bringing spouses and having children, Cahill said.
Many of the 366 students at Marshalltown's Woodbury Elementary School are
Latino, said Principal Thomas Renze. Without increased immigration, one or two
local schools would have closed because of declining enrollments, he said,
adding that the situation poses both opportunities and challenges.
Although it only takes about one year for Spanish-speaking children to develop
English-language skills for social situations, it takes about five to seven years for
them to develop English-language skills to assure they can succeed in the
classroom, Renze said.
"We need to take the long view of where will we be in five or 10 years," Renze
said. "These children are not going to go away. They are going to be our future
citizens. We need to help them to be productive members of our society."
Irlanda Helgen, a native of Panama who is an early childhood learning specialist
with the Area Education Agency in Marshalltown, left the forum with a positive
feeling.
"I think it was a good opportunity to create awareness and to motivate people to
do something about immigration," she said.
Elizabeth Mendez-Shannon of Iowa City, a doctoral student in social work at the
University of Iowa, was born in Ecuador and came to the United States with
parents who were granted legal immigration documents. She is the first member
of her family to graduate from high school, and she credited her opportunity to
pursue a post-secondary education to her legal status, which has permitted her
to be eligible for government educational assistance.
Mendez-Shannon and several other speakers expressed concerns that
unauthorized immigrants who have good academic skills aren't pursuing college
diplomas or technical degrees because they aren't eligible for certain educational
aid and for other reasons. This forces those people into lower-paying jobs when
they could be developing into highly skilled, well-paid professionals in Iowa's
work force, they said.
They agreed that public policymakers need to find ways to ensure that
academically capable immigrants can pursue higher education.
"We want to do this for a variety of reasons," Cahill said. "One, we want you to be
successful, and, two, we want to tax you."