Home and illegal immigration

A follow on the last post. The kind of traditionalist conservatism I espouse advocates working to re-establish a sense of place, and of neighborhoods, and neighborliness. One of the disorders of our age -- and indeed, the source of so many disorders -- is mobility, rootlessness. Americans today tend to think of housing as a consumer good -- once you've used it up, sell out and move on. It's just a roof over your head, after all.

Crunchy conservatism is about learning to think of our houses as homes, with all that entails. It is impossible to freeze a neighborhood in time, but homeowners have to be able to count on a reasonable amount of stability to protect their investment of money, labor and affection in their house. To that end, people have to be able to count on the rule of law being enforced on their streets. Order has to be maintained. If not, your property values go down, and you may have no choice but to leave before your investment collapses. This is true on the question of crime, and it's true when it comes to illegal immigration.

Here is a column written a few years ago by Glenn Clingenpeel, and published in the Dallas Morning News. I can't find a link to this piece, so I have to quote it in full. Irving is a suburb of Dallas:

I love Irving, or at least I used to.

About five years ago, my wife and I settled down here. We bought a modest home in a quiet little neighborhood and had two children. Being dutiful parents and good citizens, we became involved in the PTA and the local neighborhood association.

I was elected chairman of the group, and in that capacity met many interesting people. There were folks who built their homes in Irving when Highway 183 was a two-lane country road. I love hearing the stories of how Irving used to be, how it has grown, and I've enjoyed interacting with city staffers and elected officials.

But I am leaving. I am taking my family out of this south Irving neighborhood in which we have invested so much, and I am moving.

At first this was a hard decision. That is until Irving's finest, dressed in full body armor accentuated with black ski masks and accessorized with automatic weapons, began showing up in my neighborhood. I applaud these cops for their service, but I must confess that I was not entirely happy to see them standing in a yard a couple of houses down from where my children play.

You can imagine the blank expression on my face as I drove by. One of the courteous officers, seeing my empty stare, raised a gloved hand in a friendly greeting. I timidly waved back quickly and with considerable effort converted my face into a pathetic little fraud of a smile. Two months later, they were back. I passed about a dozen of them searching a home on the other end of the block on my way to work.

Although that would be quite enough, the story of my decision to leave does not end or even begin there. The principal reason is this: The demographics of my neighborhood are changing faster than the speed of light.

Oops. Now I've done it. By raising the race issue, this white guy has planted himself squarely in the middle of a field of land mines. Let us tread cautiously.

A change in demographics toward a predominantly Hispanic population is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the best neighbors on my block are Hispanics. They are courteous, outgoing and maintain their yards and homes in a way that makes me proud to share the block with them. These are people I want as neighbors, and you
should too.

However, this is not always the case, and as so often holds true, the bad examples outweigh (if not outnumber) the good. Let's be honest: It doesn't matter if you are from Nicaragua, Norfolk or Nirvana. If you have six cars outside your house that impede traffic and perpetually ooze a caustic concoction of petrochemicals; if you hold frequent outdoor parties until the wee hours of the morning with blaring music; and if you house multiple families - often times a half-dozen young males - in a single-family residence, you're not a good neighbor.

What follows when these unfortunate examples take root is a self-perpetuating degradation that eventually leads to more and more visits by men with machine guns. In Irving we have codes that have been put in place through the democratic process we all cherish. Unfortunately, I have sat through too many neighborhood meetings when city staffers have shrugged their shoulders and told us there is nothing they can do. They are either unable or unwilling to enforce the laws that should apply equally to all Irving residents.

I remember learning in Government 101 that one should never enact laws that will not or cannot be enforced. It is high time the city enforces our existing codes, particularly as they apply to single-family residences. This is necessary to protect our neighborhoods so that they will be safe and inviting places for all Irving residents, Hispanic or otherwise.

It's too late for us, though. We're going to Arlington. It's people like us - middle-class families of whatever ethnicity - that no city can afford to lose. But Irving is.
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Now, this is just one man's story, but he faced a question that more and more American homeowners will face. Here is a man who invested time and effort and affection into building equity in his house and connections in his neighborhood. Yet he decided to cut his losses because the city would not enforce laws against a lawbreaking immigrant population. What if you were in his shoes? You might be one day.

I think about my little house. Our neighborhood gentrified after the police finally got serious about fighting crime there. Our neighbors (who are working-class Hispanics) tell us that when they arrived, in the 1970s, you couldn't even go outside at night for all the drug violence. That's all changed. It's an up-and-coming neighborhood now. Old run-down houses have been restored. A once-blighted area is coming back to life, and people are working hard to preserve the quality of the neighborhood.

We are close, though, to a barrio. If the continuing tide of illegal immigration, which the US government obviously has no intention of stemming, results in a situation developing in my neighborhood like that faced by Glenn Clingenpeel, I will face a similar question: should I sell my house while I still can, or risk putting up with crime and the degradation of the quality of life in the neighborhood? If we were faced with the prospect of selling, even if we could recoup our investment, we'd have to sever ties with all our neighbors, as well as leave a house we've come to love.

Mind you, in a free society, nobody is guaranteed the right that their neighborhood will never change. It is equally likely, I think, that the rapidly gentrifying sector of Dallas in which we live will end up pushing property values so high that we can't afford the taxes on our house, and will have to move. In that case, though, we'd more than recoup our financial investment, and in any case, our dislocation will not have come about through lawbreaking or a refusal by the authorities to enforce the law.

My point in this ridiculously long post is to make the illegal immigration crisis concrete. People get passionate, and rightly so, about their homes -- and it's not only a matter of financial investment.

It is clear to me that neither the Democratic nor the Republican party has the will or the intention to enforce the immigration laws as they exist. It does seem that the system is stacked against homeowners, who are effectively powerless. And for whom can they vote to change matters? Nobody. Nobody now, anyway. All you can do is pick up and move, severing bonds of community and friendship, all because business interests and ethnic activists and the government don't give a rat's rear end.

This is not going to end pretty, I fear. You cannot tell people that they have to be prepared to abandon their homes because the government is unwilling or unable to enforce the law against illegal immigration, and expect them to sit back and take it forever.