Whenever she drives her car — whether she’s taking her two kids to school or heading to the grocery store — Sandra Masala* makes the sign of the cross and says a prayer. Every time she drives, she fears she will not make it back home.
“I’m illegal,” Masala said. “It’s hard for me — not just for me, for everybody. We think that if a police (officer) stops you, they arrest because you don't have the driver’s license. And then, when you’re in the jail, they take you to your country. They say they are just taking the (violent) criminals, but it’s not true.”
Echoes of fear are reverberating through the immigrant community in Plant City following campaign rhetoric and executive action from the administration of President Donald Trump. In addition to the call for construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico, Trump has called for stricter immigration policies, including merit-based entry systems, and has often indicated the intention to enact mass deportations.
“It would kill Plant City. We need to recognize how culturally diverse we are, how important family unification is, how important it is to have an open-door policy as far as filling our economic labor needs.”
— Mayra Calo, Tampa-based immigration lawyer
Masala, whose name has been changed because of fear of being targeted for deportation, is one of many unauthorized immigrants living in Hillsborough County. Her children, who were born in the United States, are citizens.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, there are about 41,000 unauthorized immigrants in Hillsborough. About 10,000 work in agriculture or construction, selling produce or harvesting it on the many farms in and around Plant City and laying the foundation for towns and cities throughout the county.
Agricultural impact
New immigration policies are not only damaging to the mental stability of Plant City residents, Mayra Calo, a Tampa-based immigration lawyer, said, they can also be detrimental for Plant City, where much of the agricultural prosperity in the Winter Strawberry Capital of the world relies on the work of immigrant workers, both authorized and not.
“It would kill Plant City,” Calo said. “We need to recognize how culturally diverse we are, how important family unification is, how important it is to have an open-door policy as far as filling our economic labor needs.”
According to a study from Pew Research Center based on analysis of data from the 2014 Census Bureau, 33% of the overall agriculture industry was made of foreign born workers in 2014. More than half, 18%, of those workers were unauthorized immigrants. A recent report from the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) found between 50 to 70% of farm workers are unauthorized immigrants.
“It’s a fallacy that they’re taking jobs from Americans,” Calo said.
Area farms including Fancy Farms, Passion Farms and others have already reported crop loss in the last few years due to a lack of immigrant workers. According to Kristi Boswell, director of congressional relations for labor, immigration and food safety at the AFBF, further reduction of the immigrant labor force could cripple agriculture throughout the country. Many unemployed Americans, Boswell said, don't find these jobs "attractive."
“Who is going to work in the fields?” Masala said. “Us. We make that work. Who is going to bring the food to your table? They say we come to take jobs. It’s not true. We make sure the jobs get done.”
The economics of immigration
Masala said she is shocked by the belief that unauthorized immigrants illegally take jobs from American citizens — but that’s only one of them. She’s also surprised when she hears people complain of unauthorized immigrants reaping the benefits of government assistance programs like Medicaid and welfare without putting anything into the tax system.
According to Calo, the truth is often the opposite. Unauthorized immigrants play a major role in the tax cycle without reaping many, if any, benefits. Additionally, when they shop within the community, they not only support local business, Calo said, they are paying taxes on goods and putting money into a system they don’t often see benefits from.Since they do not have any documentation, they are ineligible to receive any government assistance. While some are concerned over fraud within the welfare system, Calo said, fewer than 1% of welfare cases are found to be fraudulent.
Calo said unauthorized immigrants are putting money into the tax system. Though they may not pay taxes through wages, the work they provide for employers is taxed. According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, about 12,000 unauthorized immigrants own homes in Hillsborough, as well as vehicles. Taxes are also paid on those properties.
According to a September 2010 study titled ‘Ten Economic Facts About Immigration,’ from the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative from the nonprofit policy organization the Brookings Institution, “taxes paid by immigrants and their children — both legal and unauthorized — exceed the costs of the services they use.”
Even the high cost of childcare for immigrants, often seen as a burden on the American taxpayer, are proportional to the children of native-born parents. The cost is cancelled out when what those parents and children put back into the system is considered.
“Both the immigrant children and children of U.S.-born citizens are expensive when they are young because of the costs of investing in children’s education and health,” according to the Hamilton Project Study. “Those expenses, however, are paid back through taxes received over a lifetime of work.”
Locally, some believe, the fear among immigrants in the Plant City community has begun to directly affect the city’s economy.
Yira Naza, a community coordinator with the Hispanic Services Council, a Tampa Bay Area outreach organization, said she works with around 70 families in Plant City, most of whom are unauthorized immigrants with natural-born children. Many of them are usually eager to participate in community events — including the area’s largest, the Florida Strawberry Festival.
This year, however, things were different.
“These are people who are contributing to the economy of the Plant City community,” Naza said. “This year, the festival had fewer participants … that was because of all of this. Many of the Hispanic population didn’t go this year because they were afraid.”
In March, the Florida Strawberry Festival reported that attendance was down by about 20,000 people from last year over the course of the 11-day festival.
Naza said she knows that wasn’t entirely made up of immigrants, but she believes the fear that many feel played a large role in the number.
“They didn’t assist (in attendance) because of the fear and anxiety of the moment we are living now,” Naza said. “You cannot only say, maybe the attractions were not good or the artists were not that famous. It’s more than that.”
Naza said the families she works with, and many others in the area, are mitigating risks. When faced with the choice of driving kids to school or going to buy groceries for their family or attending an event for leisure, families are deciding to take only the necessary risks and otherwise stay home where they feel safe.
Naza said lack of attendance from the immigrant community this year was not about spite or deciding not to contribute to the economy because of unrest, but because of fear.
“It’s because of the fear that they have,” she said. “They want to contribute. They want to participate. They want to enjoy it and they want to take their kids. But this year, they didn’t.”
Immigrants and crime
The fear of driving stems not only from the administration’s rhetoric, but numbers coming from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests.
ICE arrested more than 21,000 immigrants, many with existing criminal records, between January and mid-March of this year, compared to 16,104 during the same period in 2016, according to ICE statistics. Immigrants with no prior criminal records also went up, doubling to 5,441.
Due to lack of reliable public transportation and limited walkability of Plant City, Naza said, immigrants unable to obtain a driver’s licenses see no choice but to drive illegally. It’s a misdemeanor, but leads to arrest. Even those here with authorization, Naza said, fear that multiple infractions can lead to a felony charge and the revocation of legal status eventually resulting in deportation.
“They just try to get day by day,” she said. “They are normal families that are just looking to get some bread and some roof for their children.”
The stigma of unauthorized immigrants being violent criminals, Calo said, is also misrepresented.
“It’s not disproportionate,” she said. “As a matter of fact, it’s greater on the American side than it is in the immigrant community because immigrants are not stupid. Of course there are people with mental health (issues) like in any group, but immigrants recognize that they’re not in their own country and they have to behave a certain way. They’re more respectful in recognizing the laws than people who are born here and take everything for granted.”
According to the Hamilton Project, census data shows that “immigrants are institutionalized substantially lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.” According to census data used for that report, fewer than 0.5% of immigrants are housed in correctional facilities, while just under 2% of U.S.-born citizens are institutionalized in correctional facilities.
A suitcase and a dream
Just over 14 years ago, Masala was in her late teens, working in the same fields of Guanajuato, in central Mexico, where her father worked. She began working in the fields at age 12, when her family couldn’t afford to send her to school any longer.
Life, she said, was grim, without opportunity for advancement or options. She dreamed of a life in the U.S., a life where she could educate herself and the family she wanted to have, a life with options and hope.
It was, at first, a pipe dream. It’s near impossible for a poor Mexican to gain legal access to the U.S., she said.
According to Calo, potential immigrants have three ways to get to the U.S. legally: for political asylum or as a refugee; with a visa for tourism or skilled labor; or through being petitioned by a family member or business legally operating in the U.S.
For some of the families she works with, Naza said, waiting lists to gain legal access can be a decade long.
Masala didn’t have access to legal methods of immigration.
“I would like to be legal,” she said. “But I didn’t have a way. I could come illegally or not come at all. When you don’t have anyone to help you, you have to take the risk.”
The idea remained nothing more than a thought until one night when her brother, who was living in Florida, called. He was having trouble with his wife and needed help with his children.
His situation was dire and she needed to act fast. Someone would be coming for her that night.
Recognizing it as her only chance, she said, Masala took a bus more than 1,000 miles to northern Sonora, near the U.S. border in Arizona. With a group of about 20 others looking for work in the U.S. where they believed higher wages could be earned and money sent back to family in Mexico, Masala crossed the border into Arizona.
She walked the desert for two days and one night until she was able to get a ride to Florida, where she has lived ever since.
“I didn’t have time to think about it,” she said. “I didn’t bring nothing with me, just a suitcase and my dreams.”
There is an immigration problem, Naza and Calo both said. However, they also said the issue is not an influx of violent criminals entering the country or unauthorized immigrants putting a strain on the economy.
Calo said the issues stem from laws enacted through racism and xenophobia. She believes that putting up walls is not the answer. If you look at history, she said, walls have never worked the way they were supposed to.
The only reasonable way forward, they added, is comprehensive immigration reform, an overhaul of the system that would take into account the realistic economic needs of the U.S. and the cultural and humanitarian principles the country was founded on.
It will not be easy, they said. It will take people coming together as an American community.
“You need everyone in the community, not just Hispanics,” Naza said. “The whole community needs to come together.”
On Wednesday, April 12, a group of nearly 1,500 economists sent a letter to Trump and members of Congress concerning the importance of smart immigration reform and the importance of immigrants in the American economy.
The letter was signed by economists from all areas of the political spectrum, including those from right and left-leaning think tanks and economists from presidential administrations going as far back as Ronald Reagan.
“Some of us favor free markets while others have championed for a larger role for government in the economy,” the letter read. “But on some issues, there is near universal agreement. One such issue concerns the broad economic benefit that immigrants to this country bring.”
Contact Daniel Figueroa IV at dfigueroa@plantcityobserver.com
*Sandra Masala’s name has been changed.