The quiet assimilation of the undocumented

ALL IT TAKES are salsa, chips and a healthy dose of pragmatism.

That’s the city manager’s recipe for democracy in Arvin, one of 12 California towns where more than half of the adult residents aren’t American citizens. When Arvin needed to update its noise ordinances, it decided participation, not citizenship, should rule the day.

The Central Valley agricultural town, population about 14,000, held a community meeting -- with snacks. The city officials asked a DJ to play music and measured the loudness with a decibel meter. When it came time to decide what noise level ought to be allowed, no one was asked, “Are you a citizen?”

“We asked them to raise their hands and their vote was counted,” said Arvin’s city manager, Enrique Medina Ochoa. The results went to the City Council for consideration.

It was remarkable: Without a fuss or a massive new federal law, Arvin did what it had to do so that a majority of the townspeople could participate in governing themselves.

That simple show of hands is just one way, and Arvin is just one place, where local, state and even some federal officials do their best to accommodate nearly 11 million undocumented residents as they live and work below the radar of the nation’s lawmakers but in full view of their neighbors. In many communities, everyday life makes it clear that nothing is accomplished by pitting citizens against noncitizens. Instead, the quality of life is dependent on everyone, with papers or without, getting along.

“What has happened is [that] that type of legal distinction is inconsequential,” said Joaquin Avila, a voting rights expert and a law professor at Seattle University who first noted the phenomenon of California cities with majority noncitizen voting populations. “Many of these communities are [economically] dependent on these noncitizens, so they have to take measures to make sure that they are integrated.”

That means there are plenty of accountants advertising help with impuesto, or taxes, as the undocumented line up to file their returns with taxpayer identification numbers, a creation of the Internal Revenue Service that lets taxes get paid without the need for a citizen’s Social Security number. That means banks, retail stores and some government agencies accept a Mexican-government issued identification card, the matricula consular, as good enough to open accounts, establish credit and get services, as this newspaper reported recently.

And it means that in Milwaukee, the state housing authority started a pilot program to help banks offer mortgages to residents who don’t have papers, according to the Wall Street Journal. This revitalizes rather than ignores poor neighborhoods where citizens and undocumented immigrants live.

Such thinking is an economic necessity. Take the undocumented workers out of places like Arvin, and some would simply become ghost towns. Fields that feed the country would go fallow, and construction sites would go quiet. Keep people trapped in an undocumented status and we will have a permanent underclass that will serve no one.

Arvin’s mayor, Tim Tarver, explains the modus operandi of immigration reality: “My view is we all are in this together, legal or not.”

Too often we try to punish the undocumented or delude ourselves into believing that they are all going to simply vanish back across the border. And yet the failure to grant them certain basic rights and privileges impinges on the well-being of everyone.

Pseudo-residents will risk everyone’s safety by driving illegally if they are prevented from getting licenses -- because they have to drive. Pseudo-residents’ kids will attend schools, but if those kids can’t apply for student loans, college may be impossible, and they will be unable to contribute fully to the country they call home. If pseudo-residents can’t get mortgages or are forced to pay exorbitant, exploitative rents because they are in no position to complain, they’ll crowd into substandard housing, and the quality of life diminishes for all.

Arvin is figuring out ways to deal with the fact that there’s nothing pseudo about the people who help keep its economy alive. Why can’t Washington do the same?