Illegals, Homeowners Clash in S.D. County : As Home Building Spreads in Former Farmland of North County, 2 Cultures Come Face to Face

It just wasn’t what they bargained for.

They had moved to the sunny climes of San Diego County’s northern coast, to a cozy cluster of homes nestled beside a picturesque lagoon in Carlsbad, figuring they had found the suburban dream. Then Rosanne and Paul Groves began to meet some of the neighbors.

These weren’t PTA mothers or golfing buddies down the block, but scores of migrant workers holed up in ramshackle encampments spread through the arroyos and fields of wild mustard that frame the subdivision. Half of Mexico, it seemed, was at the doorstep.

As the dismayed couple looked on each morning, groups of bedraggled aliens ambled by the handsome houses. Wary of the dark-haired strangers, Rosanne Groves took to escorting her young son to the nearby grammar school.

The couple’s fears were heightened when they heard fellow homeowners complain of burglaries. Most folks figured it was the illegals--the thieves would skip the color television or VCR and head straight to the refrigerator.

But the Groveses had other problems. Out for walks, Rosanne was harassed by the men, who whistled and called out to her. During one recent encounter, an alien exposed himself to the 34-year-old homemaker.

“It’s like we’re living in the Third World here,” Rosanne Groves lamented. “It doesn’t seem to me that this is part of the American Dream.”

Across the sprawling northern reaches of San Diego County, it is an increasingly common refrain. Although many residents remain sympathetic to the plight of the impoverished migrant workers in their midst, a swelling number of homeowners have grown distressed by the alien presence.

Lately, the complaints have become a chorus.

Elderly residents in an Encinitas mobile home park hit by a rash of burglaries in recent months talk of feeling besieged by the migrant workers living among the mesa tops and barrancas arching up behind their homes.

In Poway, the rape of a 15-year-old girl, allegedly by a group of aliens, has kindled fears in homeowners and prompted marathon meetings to grapple with the migrant worker issue.

“We don’t care if they’re Hispanic or where they’ve come from,” said Poway resident Jerry Hargarten. “The facts are that they’re transient, living in the fields, and they’re a threat to the people and the property around them.”

Angry parents in Rancho Penasquitos demand that a local Catholic church stop taking food and other necessities to aliens near a school-bus stop, arguing that the humanitarian effort makes the neighborhood a more inviting destination.

Many residents are troubled by the aliens’ increased visibility. In upscale Fairbanks Ranch, the county’s elite pilot expensive cars past a gauntlet of down-and-out migrants each morning as the men wait to be hired in front of a smart new shopping center.

Indeed, North San Diego County is today a land unlike any other along the U.S.-Mexican border, experts say, a place where squalid, plywood-and-cardboard hooches sit in the shadow of million-dollar mansions, where the BMW and Volvo set rubs elbows at the supermarket with dusty migrants fresh from the fields, where the haves routinely run head-on into the have-nots.

Backbone of Work Force

“The extremes you find in North County are hard to find elsewhere along the border,” said Leo Chavez, an assistant anthropology professor at UC Irvine who is familiar with the area. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else that polarized. . . . It’s a situation ripe for misinterpretation of behavior.”

A dozen years ago, migrant workers were a wholly accepted part of the mosaic in North County. Agriculture was king, and aliens were the backbone of the work force.

Today, a development boom is in full swing. As new housing tracts and custom homes sprout from erstwhile flower fields and farmlands, the region has increasingly experienced a clash of cultures, a collision of socio-economic circumstances.

For the migrant workers, North County is El Norte, a hop and skip across the border, where jobs in the fields or at construction sites or restaurants have always seemed plentiful. Some men have been coming for more than a decade. Others are new to the north, among them a ballooning number of youths not about to let some gringo immigration law stand in their path.

For many of their suburbanite neighbors, North County is a beacon of another sort. They have bought into a dream, an ideal, a place of wide-open spaces near the sea, away from the compromising conditions of the urban centers. Blight should be out of sight.

“I feel sympathy for them, but the ones here illegally don’t have any right to be in my community,” said DeAnne Erickson, a Poway homeowner. “It really upsets me to have these people camping out in the ravine across from me. It feels like I live in a slum.”

Many residents say there simply seem to be more illegal aliens than in years past. With unemployment in Mexico skyrocketing, experts say the push from the south remains stronger than ever, despite the tough new U.S. immigration law now in force.

The Issue of Crime

Border Patrol officials say North County’s half-million residents include about 20,000 illegal aliens, although some local authorities contend the agency’s immigrant estimate is far too high.

Amid all the wrangling, some Latino leaders and civil-rights activists have questioned whether an element of hysteria and a thread of outright racism have been woven into the rhetoric of some angry residents.

Some critics suggest, in particular, that the perception of illegal aliens as the protagonists of crime and public nuisances may far exceed what occurs.

The sociologists call it urban folklore: Perhaps a resident sees an alien urinate on his lawn and tells a neighbor, and the story is retold and retold and retold, neighbor to neighbor, until it is blown out of proportion.

“I think it’s ignorance, it’s fear of the unknown,” said the Rev. Rafael Martinez, who operates a North County agency administering to migrant field workers. “And I’d suspect there’s a certain amount of prejudice.”

Moreover, Latino leaders argue that the contributions made by visitors from south of the border are often shoved aside in the debate. Some of the same people irked by the migrant worker influx, they say, like to have their lawns mowed by aliens, like to be served by them at restaurants, like to eat strawberries picked by stoop laborers in the fields.

Nonetheless, the fears of many residents persist, with sentiments most sharply carved among those living on the front lines--the neighborhoods overlooking chaparral-studded canyons pockmarked by the crude cubbyholes of aliens, the homes set near traditional gathering spots for migrant workers waiting for prospective employers.

Rick Edwards, a father of two young boys, bought a comfortable wood-frame house along a quiet coastal street in Oceanside. Now, however, his happy homestead has been “invaded” by illegal aliens, who camp in a narrow strip of bush between the neighborhood and a lagoon within full view of busy Interstate 5.

Feel Mostly Sympathy

“My kids are scared to death,” Edwards said. “On our own street, we’ve got these people walking up and down who don’t speak our language and are filthy dirty. My boy, 7 years old, doesn’t want to go out of the house.”

Not all residents, however, are troubled by the illegal aliens living near their homes.

Pat Oller and her husband, Frank, moved a few months back into a condominium complex in Carlsbad totally unaware that a network of well-camouflaged hooches was hidden amid the tall pampas grass below the development off Palomar Airport Road.

“Our neighbor right above us really detests them,” said Oller, a retiree. “He told us to be careful, lock our house and don’t leave anything out, otherwise they’ll steal it.”

The Ollers have had no problems, however, and feel mostly sympathy for the downtrodden illegals. “I feel so sorry for them, I just don’t understand how they can live like that,” she said. “If conditions in Mexico are worse than this, then heaven help the whole country.”

Just when the outcry over migrant workers in North County first arose is hard to pinpoint.

The episode that seemed to galvanize resentment against the visitors revolved around allegations in the fall of 1986 that migrant workers were harassing young students as they walked to Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad.

Although none of the charges was ever substantiated, angry parents demanded action by federal authorities, the local police and the Carlsbad City Council, which appointed a task force to study the issues.

At about the same time, San Diego County Board of Supervisors candidate Clyde Romney held a press conference to assert that North County is plagued by gangs of illegals who “line our streets, shake down our schoolchildren, spread diseases like malaria and roam our neighborhoods, looking for work or homes to rob.”

Romney, who subsequently lost in the November, 1986, election, backed down after being challenged by Latino groups on the facts and his motives.

‘Crisis Proportions’

Tapping into worries about alien crime, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) waded into the emotional issue earlier this year. Citing scores of letters from troubled constituents, Packard declared that crime by illegal aliens in North County had nearly reached “crisis proportions.”

Like Romney before him, Packard backpedaled when faced with pressure from groups sympathetic to the migrant workers, but formed yet another task force.

The ire of many residents was rekindled in April with the rape of the Poway girl. Sheriff’s Department officials responded the next day by conducting a massive sweep, replete with SWAT team officers, of several alien encampments. Although suspects in the crime were apprehended, civil-rights advocates criticized officials for the tough tactics.

Through it all, the migrant workers themselves have remained virtually mute, generally unaware of the commotion swirling about them or cut off by language barriers from the world outside the cantones, the labyrinth of hooches and spider holes that are home

“Why should they be afraid of us? We’re the ones who spend most of our time avoiding them when we’re not working for them,” said Pasqual Robles, 51, who entered the United States illegally. “It doesn’t benefit us to attract anymore attention from the Border Patrol and police than we already get.”

Hortencia Contreras, a resident alien who owns a flower stand that serves as a gathering spot for migrant workers along busy El Camino Real in Encinitas, said she often witnesses the fear of suburbanites.

While picking out a bundle of mums or bouquet of roses, residents frequently “will walk out to check on their cars,” Contreras said. “We think it’s hilarious. These people actually think that some Indian from Oaxaca is going to break into their Mercedes or Porsche and drive away.”

Until two or three years ago, the alien work force was smaller and consisted mostly of older Mexican men who left their families and rural homes to work temporarily in the United States, Contreras said.

More Are Young

Now, however, the migrant ranks have been swelled by a growing number of young, urban Mexicans, in their teens and 20s, unwilling to play by the rules. With their penchant for trendy high-top sports shoes and listening to rock music on portable radios, the young immigrants seem much more inclined to hunker down in the United States.

Whereas migrant workers in the past would rarely venture outside the camps except to work or shop for groceries, the bolder newcomers are not hesitant about being seen in public or hanging around the local video arcade.

“The younger men are from a different generation,” said Felipe San Pedro, 48. “They like to dress in a different way. They wear their hair different and don’t like to get dirty. There are many things different about us.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them end up marrying gringas. They’re always out and about. They don’t like being confined to the camps.”

One thing that remains constant, however, is the encampments--the crude, Third World-style quarters that many migrants turn to for housing. Both aliens and academicians say the shabby hovels of scrap lumber and coal-colored plastic sheeting are unique to North San Diego County.

In Texas, many aliens live in the notorious colonias, makeshift villages on the edges of border cities. But the squalid neighborhoods are situated on the outskirts of town, experts say, while the North County encampments are pockets of poverty amid the affluence.

Moreover, the socio-economic disparities between wealthy homeowners and indigent aliens are more extreme in San Diego County than elsewhere along the border, they say.

“It’s a different situation,” said Ricardo Aguilar, interim Chicano Studies director at University of Texas, El Paso. “What you have in San Diego is the first of the First World intermixing with the last of the Third World. It’s Nicaragua versus Disneyland.”

Rafael Chavez, 54, has been coming to the United States for work since 1956, toiling at various junctures in the fields of Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Florida and California. He has never seen anything like the dusty North County camps.

Matter of Economics

“I’ve worked in all these places,” Chavez said, “but this is the only place where people live like this, in the sagebrush. I’ve never been able to understand why.”

Experts say the answer is a matter of economics. Although the area is prosperous and has a ready demand for laborers to service the needs of the wealthy, there is an inadequate stock of low-income housing for such workers, according to UC Irvine ‘s Leo Chavez.

Attempts to cope with problems such as housing, crime and other issues relating to illegal aliens have largely run aground in North County. In Encinitas, for example, a council-appointed task force floated several suggestions to better assimilate migrant workers into the community, but several of those ideas were torpedoed by residents and politicians furious over the thought of helping illegals.

No single topic, however, has raised tempers quite like alien crime.

Definitive statistics simply do not exist on the amount of crime perpetrated by illegal aliens, let alone those living in the camps. Attempts to gather those statistics have been opposed by civil-rights groups and Latino leaders on the grounds that they would only fuel the Anglo community’s suspicion toward all Latinos regardless of immigration status.

But law-enforcement personnel will speculate on two points: illegals commit a percentage of crimes far in excess of their numbers, and much of the crime committed by aliens is against other aliens, particularly robbery and assault.

The fears of many residents notwithstanding, violent assaults against Anglos are relatively rare, authorities say.

“We suspect they are involved in auto theft to a high degree,” said Carlsbad Police Chief Bob Vales. “They get involved in some petty theft, shoplifting types of things. Clothing, food, survival crimes, some residential burglaries when you get food and clothing taken, blankets, bedding.

“The suspicion lies in that area, but we can’t validate that.”

The Border Patrol, meanwhile, makes occasional sweeps through alien encampments, sometimes accompanied by local authorities. But as soon as the sweeps are over, aliens re-establish the camps and life goes on. . . .

And life does go on. Indeed, many North County residents, along with politicians, law-enforcement officials, immigration experts and social scientists, do not see the flood of illegal aliens easing in the near future. The conditions in Mexico and other Latin American countries are simply too bleak, and the lure of the capitalist giant to the north is too great.

“We play all these dumb games, people hunting down people, all this insanity,” said Anne Omsted, an Encinitas councilwoman. “It doesn’t make any sense in the long run. Mexico has incredible econom ic problems. As long as that is the case, it’s ridiculous to think our situation will get better.”

Times staff writer Anthony Perry contributed to this story.