Frankfort is a town in Clinton County, 50 miles or so north of Indianapolis. They have been having a series of fora on illegal immigration. Frankfort is a town with a number of problems. One of the voices suggesting illegal immigration as one of the most significant reasons for the problems is Vern Kaspar a staunch conservative and owner of Kaspar Communications which at least includes one of the area’s FM stations.
If Frankfort decides to get “tough on illegal immigration,” I guess we can use them as guinea pigs to see how significant the illegal immigration problem was to Frankfort’s overall condition. Indiana will be the control. If Frankfort suddenly gets a lot better after they “get tough,” we’ll have reason to think that was the problem. If it doesn’t, then the problem – as I suspect – isn’t primarily with illegal immigrants.
My exposure to Frankfort is primarily through its debtors in the context of my collection efforts. To me, Frankfort’s poor population seems a little more entrenched and a little shadier than a lot of the other places I go. They seem to work less frequently and seem less interested in paying off the debt than debtors in other places I go, like Tippecanoe, Benton, White, Carroll, and Montgomery counties. Though, I suppose, Cass County and Logansport gives me the same vibe as Clinton County and Frankfort. And, frankly, the Latino population does not seem any more likely to shirk its debts. If anything, they work harder to get things paid. Just one collection attorney’s perspective. Hardly scientific.
My thoughts are that a community should do what it can to control its illegal immigrant population. It should do this without targeting its legal immigrant population. And, this should be co-equal with any number of other community priorities. My sense is that, in Frankfort, illegal immigrants are a particularly visible scapegoat for some fairly amorphous and intractable problems the community has and would have even if every immigrant in town had the proper papers.
Doug said
I agree, IMHO. I have also noticed they are far less into handouts to help them get back on their feet.
In 2001, I reported on an immigration-related story from Ligonier, which has the second-highest Hispanic population (by percentage) in Indiana. What I learned through my research is that immigration, whatever its problems, is literally keeping the state from dying off. In the 2000 census, cities such as South Bend, Fort Wayne and Logansport recorded their first population increases in 50 years, all because Latino immigration outpaced white out-migration. In Ligonier, I noticed the main drag, Cavin Street, was almost all Hispanic businesses, which made you wonder if ANYTHING was there before they moved in. No doubt, there are some culture clashes going on, and I remember the schools in Ligonier were struggling with all of a sudden having to institute massive ESL programs. But on the whole, an area that is attracting immigration is vibrant, while one that isn’t is — well, Muncie and Terre Haute aren’t attracting much Latino immigration, and their populations keep dropping.
Doug,
Please come on now.
You dam well know that one of the major sources of employment in the Frankfort area has been meatpacking. Meatpacking use to pay decent enough pay wages that folks could pay their bills.
Perhaps folks’ reluctance to pay off their debts is a form of protest at a corrupt and uncaring Government that has helped to place them in the financial straights they now find themselves in.
Illegal Immigration is clearly being used to drive down wages. It is corruption pure and simple. No person Democrat or Republican should tolerate or justify it for one minute. Especially a lawyer.
Your attitude is pure elitist bourgeois horse**** and you should be embarrassed by it.
Ex-Hoosier,
Indiana manufacturing towns hit hard by lousy corrupt Free Trade deals do not need the double whammy of illegal immigration. County school districts that are seeing their tax bases eroded don’t need the added burden of funding ESL programs.
Doug,
My point is many unscrupulous employers today have a
jobs networks pipeline that bypasses the local community and leads straight to Mexico. I would not doubt that a major raid on a Clinton county meatpacking plant would yield a workforce consisting large numbers of illegal aliens from the same region if not town in Mexico.
You are even seeing this increasingly fields like Information Technology. The large Indian firms are increasing taking over the industry. Often they employ low wage virtually indentured workers of the same caste and sub-caste from a particular region of Indian. There are websites that literally catalog thousands of “NO AMERICAN NEED APPLY” job postings. Simply incredible and wildly corrupt. Any both political parties, or I should say more accurately the loyal Bushies and the Clintonistas are to blame.
I have been following this story in Frankfort and I agree with you. Check out the story in todays Frankfort paper. It appears that the government and the chamber don’t want educated “out of towners” coming in muddying up their bigotry. Frankfort needs all the help that they can get.
You make a few good points, and a few lousy ones.
States and Communities are largely handcuffed at the local level, and much needs to happen at the Federal level first.
(like eliminating the income tax)
As for the debt thing, my god, surely you understand the theory of “compounding interest”.
When you are in debt, it works against you greatly, especially in today’s day and age.
It’s not a matter of people not wanting to pay, it’s a matter of the burden continually increasing.
Debt collector’s like yourself have no interest in creativity, or even bartering in many cases, so nothing truly effective can get done.
Should one work a normal job, and let you come in and seize as you please, or should they try to make a real income, let it capitalize, and then negotiate down with you when they are ready and able? Who wants to make payments when the interest outweighs the payment?
Why? To line your pocket? Humbug.
http://www.frankfortpost.org
My wife registered for a library card today at the Frankfort Public Library using her PLAC card. They don’t see many PLAC cards in Frankfort, so it took a while to sort out how to get her set up. In the meantime, they copied her DL number. The reason that they took it reminded me of this post. The reason was that some people had made a practice of absconding with hundreds of the library’s books, and they wanted to be able to prosecute said offenders.
Oh, and another note about Frankfort, relevant t this post: we live close enough that we do our grocery shopping there. Most people would probably say that there are 3 grocery stores in town: Walmart, Marsh, and Aldi. But that doesn’t count the 5 or so Mexican grocery stores. One of them is more like a bakery, and we buy goodies there almost every time we’re in Frankfort.
So there you have it… a nice rambling comment about Frankfort.