Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3 | New Immigrants in New Places: America's Growing "Global Interior", page 5

Toward a National Policy on Immigrants?

While local groups have formed to limit immigrant migration, other coalitions were created to strengthen immigrant and refugee rights (a pattern that is being repeated in other communities, as well as nationally). One group, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), was established to stave off a repeal to the driver's license law. "There was a backlash to the law, but it helped push our group forward. Since then, it's made us more organized," says David Lubell, who moved to Nashville from his native New York to become TIRRC state coordinator. He said the organization does not believe immigrants should be undocumented citizens and endorses a comprehensive national immigration policy to address the documentation and other needs of immigrants.

The driver's license law, however, was revised in 2004 and the new version makes Tennessee the first of two states, including Utah, with a two-tiered system of issuing two different drivers' permits--one for legal citizens and another certificate for driving for undocumented citizens. The certificate cannot be used for identification. Because in 2005 Congress passed the Real ID Act, which requires states to issue drivers' licenses only to legal citizens, other states are looking at Tennessee's system as an example of future facilitation and structure. A number of governors, however, including Vermont's Republican governor, Jim Douglas, have voiced concerns about the bureaucracy that the Real ID Act may end up creating, and the fact that it may impose an unfunded federal mandate on the states.

During this year's legislative session, Tennessee delegates have considered a slew of bills that both limit and expand immigrants' rights and benefits. Five bills, endorsed by Harmon and TRIP, would require driver's license exams to be given only in English, prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving state social services, require state employees to report undocumented workers to federal authorities, prohibit immigrants from possessing handguns and repeal the driver's certificate. Four other bills, endorsed by Lubell and TIRRC, would extend the drivers' certificate duration, give legal immigrants more access to drivers' licenses and increase funding for ESL teachers in public schools.

Tennessee's active calendar of divisive legislation dealing with immigrants exemplifies how state and local governments are struggling to chart their own course through these troubled waters in the absence of an overarching national policy on immigrant integration. Many in the general public are also concerned about these issues: a national survey of likely voters released in March 2005 showed overwhelming and intense support for bipartisan federal legislation that would allow foreigners and undocumented immigrants to obtain work permits and earn their way to citizenship.

While opposing amnesty for undocumented workers, President George W. Bush has said that immigrants and refugees should be allowed to obtain legal work permits. Building on that idea, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators, led by Edward M. Kennedy and John McCain, have introduced legislation that, among other provisions, would create a pathway to earned legalization for many undocumented immigrants.

In response to the growing awareness and demand for a unified national policy on immigrants, the Migration Policy Institute has convened a bipartisan task force of leaders and experts concerned with and affected by immigrants. "While the United States, with its immigration heritage, has long been a world leader in welcoming and integrating newcomers, there is a growing gap today between our official immigration policies and realities on the ground," the Institute's task force statement proclaims. "Immigration issues are complex with wide-ranging consequences that span individual rights, the rule of law, the way our cities and labor markets operate, American competitiveness, national security and the unique character of the United States in the world."

"Immigration issues are also controversial and little consensus exists on key policy questions," the statement continues. "Part of the explanation for this controversy and political division owes to the fact that immigration policy debates are often poorly informed, polarized and narrow. The ambition of this task force is to inform and broaden those debates."

The need for adopting national policies is clear to many, including David Lubbell of TIRRC. He says, "It's a myth that if Tennessee passes laws to prevent immigrants from coming here then the state won't be affected by this national phenomenon. To throw out all immigrants is not humane, not feasible and it's not going to happen. What we need are federal guidelines."

In the meantime, Nashville continues to seek the guidance and information it needs to address the immigrant influx in lieu of a national directive. In January 2005, a team of college and university researchers commissioned by Nashville/Davidson County mayor Bill Purcell released a year-long study to assess the city's social service capacity and to determine how to better ease the transition for Nashville's foreign-born arrivals. The mayor plans to use the study in a performance audit of the city/county Social Services Department to improve the level of services to foreign-born residents.

"The fact that the local government commissioned this study shows that they are concerned with understanding the perspective of the immigrants and the social service providers," says Dan Cornfield of Vanderbilt University, the study's principal investigator.

The study, which surveyed 64 social service organizations and conducted 16 focus groups of 137 immigrants, found that a majority of social service providers operated from outside the immigrant community and offered services mainly in English. The study also compared services to those in Atlanta, Charlotte and Memphis and recommended that Nashville adopt some of the best practices found in those cities such as Charlotte's establishment of a Mayor's Advisory Board on immigrant issues.

Today, Nashville is a handbook for the nation, an index of mistakes and gains. It is certainly a much more exotic and cosmopolitan city, an eclectic collection of international food, art and entertainment. Three Hispanic-themed films were featured in this year's Nashville Film Festival. Austin Peay State University opened a Hispanic Cultural Center this year and an exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts includes the star-spangled couture of Mexican-native designer Manuel. The country music duo Big and Rich has incorporated bilingual rap into their musical repertoire.

But a poll conducted by Middle Tennessee State University in 2002 indicated that negative feelings about immigrants and refugees are increasing in middle Tennessee. Hispanics are making life worse, according to forty-one percent of those surveyed, compared with twenty-eight percent in 1998. Negative reactions to Middle Easterners were reported by thirty-nine percent of respondents, while fifteen percent said the same about Asians. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed believed that U.S. immigration policy is "too open."

Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies says Nashville's reactions to the immigrant and refugee influx is an indicator of the mood in the rest of the nation. "Nationally, there's always a divide between public opinion and the elite opinion," he says, "and that's the case in Nashville and other cities. The mayor, the businessmen and the preacher of the Presbyterian church may have one reaction to their arrival, but the local union president may say another thing."

So as Nashville is forced to confront a critical crossroads in its history, the perennial question nags: Will the "Tocquevillian paradise" teeter as state budgets are pinched and social service demands increase? Can the city's economy sustain and tolerate an open-gate policy? Will it provide a blueprint for national immigration reform? Can the city become a truly diverse compendium of mixed races and cultures?

The answer is still unfolding before the eyes of those witnessing history in the making. One of them is Carolyn McKenzie, the mother of a Tennessee soldier in Iraq who was unaware of the large presence of Kurdish refugees until the January polling stations were opened in Nashville. More than 3,700 people voted there. "This is not a normal Nashville kind of thing," she said. "I think it's divine intervention. We're blessed to have them and to be able to have this opportunity."

Anne Farris is a national freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. who reports and writes about government and politics. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Arkansas Gazette. She has contributed to several books, including Blood Sport, and is the author of Test Pilot, a biography of Stanley H. Kaplan. She also reports for BBC Current Affairs and other English-based film documentary companies.