May 04, 1997|By Caitlin Francke | Caitlin Francke,U.S. Census Bureau and Maryland Office of PlanningSUN STAFF
This series on the impact of the rising number of immigrants settling in suburbia continues in the Howard County edition of The Sun with: Tomorrow: Howard County service providers -- from police officers to social service workers -- increasingly face language barriers in dealing with residents.
Tuesday: Columbia's Oakland Mills village is being transformed by its growing Latino population.
In his east Columbia apartment decorated with pictures of the Virgin de Guadelupe, a 27-year-old Honduran illegal immigrant recalls his struggle in Southern California -- where he competed in vain for jobs with thousands of men just like him.
But in Howard County for the past three years, he has had no trouble finding work: mowing, pruning and mulching the yards of affluent homeowners -- and even those of government buildings.
Jobs in "the border states don't pay well because there are people all over the place," the Honduran says. "You go looking for who is going to pay you more."
Illegal immigrants and the suburban sprawl of the Baltimore-Washington corridor are the perfect mix: low-wage workers willing to do hard labor in areas desperate for drywallers and ditchdiggers. These workers aren't easy for prospective employers to find amid the 3-acre lots and look-alike mansions that grow like weeds in the corridor's tony developments.
As thousands of legal immigrants have become a much more apparent part of the Baltimore suburban landscape over the past decade, their illegal counterparts have followed -- settling into growing enclaves of foreign-born residents and finding work through the grapevine.
The number of foreign-born residents of Maryland has risen steadily since 1990 -- increasing 31 percent, to 412,000, last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Those estimates include U.S. citizens, those with work permits or green cards and those living here illegally.
Immigration experts say many of those immigrants are flocking to suburbs in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
Using census and other immigration data, the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington says Howard, Baltimore, Prince George's and Montgomery counties have become beacons for immigrants, legal and illegal.
The relative numbers of foreign-born people and their impact on these Maryland counties place them in the top 14 percent of U.S. counties affected by immigration, the group says, with such traditional immigration centers as Corpus Christi, Texas; and Miami.
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents estimate that about 44,000 illegal immigrants live in Maryland. Exact numbers are impossible to come by.
But according to figures compiled by The Sun, that means roughly one of six foreign-born residents who are not citizens is living here illegally.
Illegal immigrants are mowing lawns in Columbia, washing dishes in Annapolis and cooking food in Towson. In such places as Odenton, they are building the houses that fulfill homeowners' American dream -- even as immigrants quietly try to build an American dream of their own.
Says the Honduran as his girlfriend feeds her baby tortillas and rice in their Columbia apartment: "I like it here. The neighborhood is good, and people don't rob from you here."
The number of illegal immigrants in area suburbs has escalated the past five years, INS officials say.
Evidence of that shows up nearly every spring day at a trailer on Philadelphia Road in Baltimore County. Ruppert Landscape Co., the largest such company in Maryland with 500 employees, routinely turns away 75 percent of the job applicants at this office because they lack documents that allow them to live and work in the country legally.
"There's a lot of illegals out there, and they are working somewhere," branch manager Chuck Whealton says.
Records filed recently in Howard Circuit Court on unrelated criminal charges show how a Haitian immigrant who did not have legal status survived well in Howard County for four years, working at a nursing home, the county hospital, a Laurel fast-food restaurant and a Columbia restaurant.
That immigrant, Richard Charles, also had a driver's license, paid car insurance and filed income taxes -- and had a green card showing he was a legal resident but that federal agents say was fake.
Illegal immigration is "definitely becoming more of a suburban phenomenon than before," says Jessica Vaughan, assistant director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter controls on immigration. "That's where the jobs are."
Benedict J. Ferro, district director for the INS in Baltimore, says his agency is cracking down on illegals in the suburbs.
Since 1994, INS agents have made about 290 raids in suburban Maryland counties -- compared with 44 in Baltimore. The city and suburban raids led to about 850 arrests of illegal immigrants.
"Where there is residential construction," there are illegal immigrants, Ferro says. "For our suburbs, [construction] is big .. business."
