3 Part Study on Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration, Liberal Elites, and Obama

By David Paulin - Part I of III

Millions of Hispanics, mostly poor and uneducated, have immigrated to America illegally since the early 1990s. Most are Mexicans and most of them are high school dropouts.  Compared to what they might have had in a slum or impoverished rural area of Mexico or Central America, these immigrants have done well here.

It has been different story for their neighbors -- middle-class Americans. For them, illegal immigration has often meant a deterioration of their neighborhoods, public schools, and their quality of life -- especially across America's southwest.

Some have watched their culture erode: It's not uncommon to see Mexican flags flying in Spanish-speaking enclaves in towns and cities from Texas to California. This includes "sanctuary cities" like Austin, the Texas state capital, where until recently I'd lived for the past few years.

Most middle-class Americans are fed up with illegal immigration. They get no sympathy from liberal elites, however, including the open-borders elites at that lofty bastion of American journalism, the agenda-setting New York Times.

There is some amusing liberal hypocrisy going on here when you consider where top editorial staffers and executives at the Times and many of their affluent readers live. It's in trendy parts of New York City: places like gentrified Brooklyn and SoHo and Manhattan's posh Upper East Side. You definitely won't find any Mexicans crowding into low-rent apartments in those areas, creating Spanish-speaking enclaves resembling shabby parts of Mexico.

Some Times readers and top staffers don't live in the city but in the suburbs -- in pleasant "bedroom communities" boasting first-rate public schools, safe neighborhoods, and a high quality of life. In exclusive towns like Westport, Connecticut (pop. 27,000), a place I'm familiar with. It's composed almost entirely of very expensive single-family houses. Oh, and something else about Westport: It's overwhelmingly white. 

Stroll down Westport's boutique-lined Main Street, and you'll see mostly well-to-do white folks and maybe a few Asians. There are plenty of Mercedes and BMWs on

Main Street

. But you won't see any pick-ups racing about with an illegal alien at the wheel, driving without a license and liability insurance -- a common problem in Texas. In Westport, homes have not become flop houses for large numbers of illegal immigrants. There are no menacing Hispanic gangs. In Austin, which prides itself on being inclusive, multicultural and diverse, gang activity is surging, say police. However, Austin's politically correct media tiptoes around the Hispanic character of gang violence.

It's not as if Connecticut has no illegal immigrants; it does. The working-class city of Danbury just north of Westport -- a 40-minute drive away -- is home to thousands of illegal immigrants from Ecuador and Brazil. They comprise an estimated 20 percent of the 80,000 population.

Angry residents blame the invasion for straining the city's schools and social services and lowering its quality of life. Above all, homeowners are outraged at seeing their property values decline. "They're blue-collar workers and their whole life savings is tied up in their house and they're seeing their neighborhood being destroyed," homeowner Peter Gadiel told Fox News. 

Zoning Wall of Exclusion

So why has nothing like this happened in Westport? It's thanks to draconian zoning rules. In Westport, apartments are all but prohibited;  there are only a handful of them. Overwhelmingly, Westport consists of very expensive single-family houses; the medium sale price is $1.2 million. Accordingly, housing is too expensive for middle-class Americans to buy or rent and it's too expensive for unskilled immigrants, too. This prevents them from gaining a foothold in Westport. Instead, they go to working-class and inclusive places like Danbury or to "sanctuary cities" like New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University.

Back in the mid-1980s, before illegal immigration was a problem, critics of Westport's zoning policies accused the town of creating a "zoning wall of exclusion." As a consequence, middle-class people working in one of Westport's many office complexes couldn't afford to live in town; they had to commute from less affluent towns and cities in the region. Westport's homes also were too expensive for policemen and firemen, school teachers, and social workers.

Yet that's exactly what Westporters wanted: exclusivity. Accordingly, they created a Planning & Zoning Commission, hired a town planner, and elected fellow Westporters to that body to enforce their will: maintain the town's character, property values, and resist calls to allow "affordable" apartments and even condominiums.

In other affluent bedroom communities in the northeast's blue states, that's how they do things. "Nobody has the right to live anywhere. They have a right to earn the right to live anywhere," an influential member of Westport's powerful Planning & Zoning Commission, a Democrat, told me in June, 1985.

I was a young journalist at the time, writing a freelance piece about Westport's lack of "affordable" housing for the Connecticut section of the Sunday New York Times. I was a Democrat back then, and affordable housing seemed like a darn good idea to me, one everybody would surely rally behind.

Yet at spirited town meetings, I was shocked to see red-faced Westporters shout and hiss at proposals to allow affordable housing and even rent-controlled condos. Now, I think I understand: People change a lot when they get married, buy houses, and put down stakes in their communities. Some Democrats even become Republicans. I've known at least two Times staffers who lived in Westport. (Stay tuned for Part II)