'I feel scared just to say "hi" '
Esther J. Cepeda
Daily Southtown
Mar 19, 2007
Doraceli Ortega had nothing but hope for her young family when she and her husband, Filyalberto, bought their first home in Carpentersville two years ago.
They moved with their two children from Wauconda to be closer to Filyalberto's factory job and settle in a Hispanic community.
Now, like many other Hispanics living in northwest suburban Carpentersville, a town of about 35,000, Ortega is scared.
She finds herself living in a place where she says she and others in the Hispanic community, which has grown from 16 percent to 40 percent of the town's population in the past 15 years, might one day be targeted by ordinances that some say seek to curb the influx of illegal immigrants. The proposed laws are believed to be the first of their kind in Illinois.
"We're all a little alarmed," Ortega, 24, said in Spanish. "Already I have a neighbor who tells us to go back to Mexico. I feel scared just to say 'hi' to people."
This month, two of Carpentersville's seven trustees tried unsuccessfully to get an "Official Language Ordinance" to be discussed by the village board. It would declare English as the official language of Carpentersville, essentially eliminating village documents printed in Spanish.
The proposal comes on the heels of a contentious "Illegal Immigration Relief Act" those same trustees -- Paul Humpfer and Judy Sigwalt -- introduced last fall. That ordinance would have punished people who employ or rent to illegal immigrants, but it was tabled indefinitely after some 3,000 people, mostly Hispanics, protested outside the village hall.
Neither of the proposals are scheduled for discussion by trustees, but Humpfer and Sigwalt hope to pursue the issues.
Village manager Craig Anderson said there's some community support for the moves, "but people get along pretty fine."
Still, tensions simmer. Anderson said tensions have risen since last year when Carpentersville police assisted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in deporting 44 illegal immigrants.
The proposed laws put Carpentersville on a list of more than 60 small towns across America anxiously awaiting the outcome of last week's federal trial in Hazelton, Pa., to determine whether local governments can enact laws to curb the influx of illegal immigrants.
For Ortega, who balances two work schedules and a busy family life, the proposals are frightening. The Veracruz, Mexico, native speaks only a little English. She burst into tears on a recent day as she told of neighbors and customers at work telling her, "We don't want you here; go back home."
Ortega, like 99 percent of Carpentersville's Hispanic population, lives on the east side of the village, a long, skinny town divided by the Fox River.
Vibrant east side businesses teem with people visiting dollar stores, Mexican bakeries and nail salons. Windows are decorated in the red, white and green of the Mexican flag, their signs mostly in Spanish. The subdivisions, like Ortega's, are older, packed with small, ranch-style homes.
But even there, Ortega, who is five months' pregnant, is scared.
"You don't know who you can say 'hi' to or, if someone hurts you, if you can go to the police," she said.
In this part of Carpentersville, neighborhoods face overcrowding, culture clashes and some gang activity, but tensions here are not exclusively about race, said Nancy Conrad, 72, who has lived on the east side for 20 years. She wants all immigrants to speak English.
"I'm not against them; there's good and bad," Conrad said. "If you want to come to America, be American, OK, fine, but you have to speak American. Learn our language."
East sider Evelyn Measimer, 88, a resident for more than 20 years, says she "can just tell" her Hispanic neighbors are nice, friendly people -- some of them even do odd jobs to help her and her husband out -- but she's frustrated.
"I'd love to get acquainted," she said. "But they don't want to learn English, and at my age, I just can't learn Spanish."
In stark contrast, west of the Fox River new subdivisions with names such as Winchester Glen, Providence Point and Glen Eagle Farms have sprung up in the past five years. There, homes sell for up to $1 million, and the strip malls offer dry-cleaning service and vintage wine shops.
Gina Lovinelli, 27, who lives in a new, custom house on the far west side, said that when she looks around her town, she sees a quiet, peaceful community -- not a crossroads in a national immigration debate.
"When I say I live in Carpentersville, people think it's a bad neighborhood (because of the population mix)," she said. "I just kind of ignore it."
Elias Cortes, 25, lives on the east side and works on the west. He said he'd be happy to learn English if there were classes available around his work schedule.
"Instead of an English-only law, we need more schools to teach us," Cortes said. "But it seems more like it's because they don't want us to speak Spanish."
