Natives, Newcomers at Odds in East L.A.

Mike Almaguer’s face twists in disgust as he peers out the window past his neatly trimmed lawn on Hereford Drive, an ordinary block of two-bedroom homes in East Los Angeles. Here, says the third-generation Mexican American, lies the gritty side of America’s largest wave of immigration.

Once it was a more middle-class area. Now, Almaguer estimates that the block has tripled in population since 1970; most of the new neighbors are poor immigrants.

Seventeen people have jammed into one of the small stucco houses. Some live in garages without plumbing, using lawns to relieve themselves. Some mothers leave soiled diapers on the sidewalk and in grocery store parking lots and drape damp laundry on bushes and automobiles. Clunkers, parked on front lawns or clogging the street, pepper the pavement with pools of oil. Then, there is the ultimate suburban sin: Many immigrants, he says, don’t keep up their lawns.

Almaguer and other second- and third-generation Mexican Americans on Hereford, many of whom voted for Prop. 187, gossip over their hedges about the large influx of “wetbacks” and the block’s sagging fortunes.

“These things gnaw at us. It’s as if someone comes up to you with a gun and takes your money away. The guy with the gun is the immigrant who by his lifestyle is depressing the value of my property by $15,000 to $20,000,” says Almaguer, adding that his views are based on class, not race.

Many economists recognize immigrants as a source of cheap labor for U.S. industry and agriculture. Immigrants themselves stress that they are hard-working and no different from earlier generations of immigrants who gave birth to communities all over the Eastside. And Mexican Americans often view the newcomers with compassion and say their contributions are undervalued.

But here, in the trenches of East Los Angeles, many Mexican Americans--themselves children and grandchildren of immigrants--summon little sympathy for the newcomers. It’s an antipathy that some experts say is common in whole swaths of the region, where a third of residents in Los Angeles County and nearly a quarter in Orange County are foreign-born.

People in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica may dispassionately denounce America’s latest nativist spasm and talk of upholding Lady Liberty’s vaunted principles. But it is Los Angeles’ Latino barrios that often have borne the brunt of an influx of impoverished, unskilled people, more than half of whom make $10,000 a year or less. For those neighborhoods, rapid immigration hasn’t meant cut-rate nannies and gardeners, but heightened job competition, depressed wages, more-crowded government services, a lower quality of life.

“It’s simplistic to say ‘Hey! Isn’t this the land of immigrants?’ ” says Almaguer, 74. He seethes over illegal immigration and also wants the government to reverse a 1990 federal law that allowed legal entrants to climb by 40%. “Oh come on, get off that crap! Let’s get on terra firma and call this what it is.”

Almost 10 million immigrants--half of emigrants worldwide--came to America in the 1980s, more than in any other decade in U.S. history. Thirteen million--legal and illegal--are expected to arrive in the 1990s, more than the population of Illinois.

California got the most: Four in 10 immigrants during the 1980s came here. About 2.2 million surged into Southern California, a 1995 study found. In a nation where demand for low-skill workers is shriveling, the greatest number of immigrants arrive from Mexico, 55% with an eighth-grade education or less.

On Hereford Drive, a tree-lined, suburban street--predominantly Anglo in the 1960s and mostly Mexican American by the ‘80s--change has come at an unsettling pace. Fully 44% of the area’s residents in 1990 were foreign-born, up from 39% a decade earlier. The number of families living in poverty has jumped to one in five from nearly one in seven, U.S. census figures show. Children attend Montebello Unified District schools, where half of students speak little or no English.

Some Mexican Americans decry the mounting anti-immigrant frenzy, calling it scapegoating in tight economic times. Problems alluded to by many Mexican Americans--stagnant wages, shrinking job opportunities--are tethered more to global economic changes than immigrants, they say. American corporations and U.S. consumers pay less for food, clothing and other goods because immigrants work for as little as $2 an hour.

Throughout U.S. history, immigration experts note, earlier generations of immigrants have sought to slam the door on successive “inferior” ones. And Latino leaders warn that such schisms must be overcome to gain an elusive goal: political clout.

“If [immigrants] don’t have money for new paint, or to reseed their lawn, that’s fine. Sometimes, people are poor. They just can’t afford it,” says Naomi Ayala, 53, a third-generation Mexican American who lives several doors down from Almaguer. The day-care provider’s biggest concern--what forced her to keep her children from playing on the front lawn--is a gang of Mexican American teens who loitered on the block, sometimes 30-strong, drinking and selling drugs.

Despite such arguments, most Mexican Americans haven’t put out a welcome mat. A 1992 nationwide survey showed that 75% of Mexican Americans believe too many immigrants are arriving.

Three-quarters of California’s Latinos polled view illegal immigration as a problem. Prop. 187, which would bar immigrants from schools, hospitals and most public assistance, is supported by nearly a third of California’s Latinos, a poll last year found.

On Hereford Drive, longtime residents upset by the shifting demographics have lashed out:

One threatened to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service on an immigrant neighbor whose house was in disrepair. “Clean up or we’ll report you!” he said in an anonymous letter.

“Turn down that wetback music!” screams Mike Contreras, a second-generation American, bellowing to any newcomer who blares ranchera music.

Nick Nicolaides and Julian Puentes, one Mexican American, one immigrant, have heated sidewalk arguments about whether immigrants are the area’s salvation or downfall.

At the nearby St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, nun Cathy Garcia says some Mexican Americans have fled to churches with fewer immigrants. Less than a quarter of the masses are now in English.

Like many on Hereford Drive, Almaguer’s own battle to escape poverty reinforces a resentment toward foreigners who he believes get too much government help. Almaguer, whose grandparents fled here during the Mexican revolution, grew up living in a converted boxcar in Kansas. His father, who later left the family, laid ties for the railroad. By age 5, Almaguer was laboring in onion fields before and after school. His mother died when he was a seventh-grader. He joined the migrant stream, picking walnuts and beans and sleeping under a tree. He took night courses to obtain high school and college degrees.

In 1950s East Los Angeles, immigrants “were no threat numerically,” says the Post Office retiree. Unlike now, women and children usually stayed in Mexico while the men went north for stints as dishwashers or gardeners. Then the trickle of immigrants became a torrent.

At the nearby True Valu supermarket, Almaguer watches women who he believes are immigrants pay with food stamps, which noncitizens can receive for their U.S.-born children. Even worse to him is the claim that taxpayers foot the bill for immigrants’ large families. Los que Dios Mande, (“As many as God sends”) the slim man says, mockingly stretching his arms toward the heavens.

“Before, there was no dependency on the public trough. Now, we have apprised people from here to Tierra del Fuego,” he says, pointing south, “that the goods are here.”

Such immigrant-bashing is often dished out by the Federation for American Immigration Reform based in Washington, whose recent controversial report claims that high-immigration cities are plagued with overcrowded housing. They also have 40% more people in poverty than low-immigration cities. But some studies say other factors largely unrelated to immigration are at work.

Up and down Hereford Drive, such views resonate with some Mexican Americans.

Poking at the innards of his blue flatbed truck, third-generation American Vince Lopez, 33, describes the fear he has of losing his job as a Goodyear Tire Center mechanic to low-paid immigrants who, a 1991 L.A. County study found, sometimes work for less than the minimum wage. His brow furrows as he chronicles the recent profusion of Mexican-owned tire shops that charge $30 for a job he bills at $50. Immigrants begin in low-level jobs but move up to better-paying trucking and mechanics’ work that natives covet, he says. “I think they should all leave,” he says. “Prop. 187 was unfair but right.”

His uncle, Henry Mendez, 41, voted against Prop. 187, calling it inhumane, but says both illegal and legal immigration must be slashed. Despite employer sanctions, the mason says, companies hire illegal workers.

For most Americans, studies show, immigrants--most of whom work in manufacturing or services--aren’t a source of job competition. But experts stress some exceptions: African Americans and Mexican Americans, who are more likely to hold similar low-skilled jobs. (Forty-one percent of second-generation and 30% of third-generation Latinos in California have not graduated from high school.) Immigrants account for a third of the 10% drop in wages for high school dropouts between 1980 and 1988, says George Borjas, a Harvard public policy professor.

Newly arrived immigrants are also slightly more likely to receive welfare than natives (in 1990, 8.3% received public assistance in 1990, compared with 7.4%, Borjas says) and their benefits average about 30% more per capita, a 1995 study found. In California, about 120,000 welfare recipients are the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

One Mexican American on Hereford Drive becomes incensed as she describes how a recently arrived neighbor got public assistance, then nonchalantly explained: “This land used to be ours. They owe us.”

Kathy Castro, a third-generation Mexican American housewife who lives across from Almaguer, says bilingual classes at Montebello Park Elementary have hurt her 9-year-old daughter. Melissa was automatically assigned to a bilingual classroom her first three grades even though she grew up speaking English. Because of Spanish-language instruction, Castro says, Melissa’s English-reading skills remained atrocious.

Her mother says that after she demanded that Melissa be placed in English-only classes earlier this year, the girl’s reading has improved greatly.

At the Montebello Senior Citizen Center, Mexican American veterans and others worry that rising immigration has created large enclaves of newcomers who feel less pressure to assimilate. Here, anger flares over why so many immigrants hang Mexican flags on their porches. “If I flew an American flag in Mexico they would throw you in jail and throw the key away,” said Sara Jurich, a petite woman who used to clean B-24s for the military, as other seniors, most of them Mexican American, kicked off their morning meeting with a stirring rendition of “God Bless America” and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Many Hereford Drive immigrants say Mexican Americans are sadly mistaken about the effect the newcomers have had on the area.

Nubia, a recent immigrant, rides out a downpour with her two infants in her home, a converted garage. A bare light bulb dangles from the ceiling. In the dank cubicle, above the bed, is a gilded portrait of Jesus.

Nubia, 21, ventured illegally to the United States from her Chihuahua village, where many live in cardboard shacks with no light or running water. She met her husband at a dance here; they soon had children. Medi-Cal, California’s health system for the poor, paid for her prenatal care and the deliveries. Nubia, whose children are American-born, receives $200 a month in food stamps. Her husband takes free English classes at a local high school. Although grateful, she believes her husband’s willingness to do hard labor at a Montebello factory for a pittance ($180 a week) and their payment of taxes entitles her to the benefits.

“They think they are so superior,” she says of Mexican Americans. “They look at you as if you have come to take their job, as if you are a foreign object.” Four families share the tiny house and garage where she lives out of necessity, not desire. Mexican American homeowners, she says, have benefited by charging immigrants high rents (for the house, the families pay a combined $1,500 monthly; the garage alone goes for $400.)

Immigrants’ can-do attitudes have revived whole neighborhoods here and elsewhere, said Michael Fix, principal research associate at the Urban Institute. He says heightened job competition and depressed wages are largely caused by the underperformance of some industries and globalization of the economy. Indeed, one study shows, if there had been no Mexican immigration to Los Angeles County in the 1970s, 90,000 jobs would have been lost.

It is well past dusk one recent Sunday and Blas Galavaz, 36, is still on the roof of his house, hammering shingles, his hands caked with dirt.

Galavaz, a third-grade dropout, began working when he was an 8-year-old in Mexico. He ventured north at 18, working illegally for seven years. The trucker works 16- to 18-hour days, leaving home at 4 a.m., returning at 10 p.m. “Those born here aren’t used to doing anything,” he scoffs, prying a straw hat from hair soaked with sweat. “It’s the immigrants who are keeping this country afloat.”

“No American will work hard for low wages,” said Jesus Abundic, 40, a Hereford Drive resident who works two blocks away at Damas Nursery, where he does chores six days a week for $350. He has seen cocky native-born Latinos try to work at the nursery; none, at least by his recollection, has lasted more than three weeks.

Some Mexican Americans on Hereford Drive temper their criticism of the immigrants, mindful that any crackdown is likely to touch the native-born as well. Many vividly remember “Operation Wetback,” launched in 1954, when some U.S. citizens were mistakenly swept up as illegal immigrants were deported.

Others recall their own brushes with discrimination: Until the 1950s, a nearby public pool in Montebello prohibited Mexican Americans from swimming except on the last day of the season, before they drained the water. Garcia, the St. Alphonsus nun, recalls how whites often called Mexican American churchgoers “dirty Mexicans.” Her mother, infuriated, inspected her scrubbed ears every morning.

But many Mexican Americans are stoking anti-immigrant sentiments by passing their own views on to their children.

At Schurr High School, which Hereford Drive children attend, the mostly immigrant folkloric troupe performs one evening for the Winter Festival of Theater and Dance. The girls, dressed in blue satin dresses, stomp their bare feet and twirl their hips to the drumbeat of the Aztec dance as the boys thrust machetes into the air. There is polite applause. But after the performance, the dancers say, Mexican Americans at Schurr usually treat them with contempt. The immigrants endure snide remarks about how newcomers snatch jobs from their “more deserving” native-born parents. During campus brawls, Mexican American teens call immigrants “wetbacks” and yell out, “Here comes the INS!”

“They put down their own race. They want to be like the powerful group--the whites,” says Teresa Vasquez, 15, who came to America five years ago. Her sister, Silvia, 13, bows her head. As tears well in her eyes, she says she hopes her children, who will be born here, won’t forget what it is like to be an outsider, and will be proud of their immigrant heritage.