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Alternate
Universe
There's
one world that participates in a globally
connected economy. Then there's Virginia, which is
making a name for itself as a hotbed of nativism.
Not
long ago, I had a drink with a woman who recently
moved to the Richmond as part of one of the
Fortune 500 company relocations. She is a born and
bred New Yorker with a sardonic and highly
entertaining wit. Asked how she liked her new
home, she said: “It’s like living in a
parallel universe. There’s one reality here. And
there’s another reality for the rest of the
world.”
For
a view of that separate reality consult the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, the paper of record of the
parallel universe. A front page story Oct. 25
touted a move among 20 counties and cities to
prepare crackdowns on illegal immigrants, whether
they really are here or not.
The
TD quoted the sheriff of rural
Northumberland County saying that there is
apparently a local apartment building with fights
and loud music. Hispanic men, “some of them
suspected to be illegal immigrants” crowd into
single bedroom units where they sleep in shifts.
The
next day, the TD had another story about
the new vigilante group of local governments. It
quoted Culpeper County Administrator Frank Bossio
admitting that he didn’t know how many illegal
immigrants there were in his area, but “about 10
percent of the county’s schoolchildren are
Hispanic.”
Let’s
see if we can find the common equation here –
Hispanic equals illegal equals bad. So, if you are
a dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking individual you
must be here illegally living off the largesse of
the great American heart. Never mind that the
first European settlers in North America were
Spanish, not English as the Jamestown marketeers
would have you believe. The Hispanics are loud,
messy, have big families and live chock-a-block in
a single room.
Let’s
turn now to the rest of the world and meet Diana
Ramirez, a 23-year-old metallurgical engineering
student from Mexico. She’s a senior at the
University of Texas at El Paso and I interviewed
here recently for a cover story I wrote for a
national education magazine about the advantages
of being bi or multi-lingual in the engineering
and science fields. Being so is especially
important given the increasingly global nature of
world business whether Virginians like it or not
or whether it may affect our cherished “Virginia
values,” as House Speaker Bill Howell likes to
say.
Last
summer, Diana was working at an 11-week internship
at a General Motors castings plant in Defiance,
Ohio, that turns out parts for cars. An alert went
out that a sister GM plant in Toluca Estado de
Mexico was having a production problem that had
afflicted the Ohio factory earlier. Company
officials from Mexico they needed a Spanish
speaker also fluent in engineering terms and
knowledgeable about casting.
GM
turned to Diana. “I was able to help,” she
says. In short order, engine heads, blocks and
crankshafts were being churned out again. Diana
can’t give more details on the Ohio situation
because they are proprietary corporate secrets.
Being
bi-lingual “is very helpful,” says Diana who
will graduate in December and hopes to be a U.S.
citizen by then. She expects to find full-time
work in Mexico. Her college town is in a
particularly good location to be bilingual and
engaged in cross cultural work. It is right on the
border with the large Mexican city of Cuidad
Juarez. For decades, workers have crossed the
border daily to work on one side or the other,
although post-9/11 security checks and the
anti-Hispanic craze has made border checks a
two-hour process.
Thanks
to free-trade pacts, the El Paso-Juarez region has
emerged as the third largest manufacturing center
in North America after Los Angeles and Chicago. On
the Mexican side, “maquiladoras” or special
tax-free production zones got a big boost in 1994
when the North American Free Trade Agreement has
passed. NAFTA was a landmark bill that dumped many
tariffs and boosted trade among Canada, Mexico and
the U.S. Many marquee-name U.S. firms, including
Delphi auto parts, modem-maker Scientific Atlanta
and peripheral-manufacturer Lexmark, have
cross-border plants that take advantage of cheaper
labor costs and low-to-nil export fees. In fact,
Delphi is so drawn the region’s dynamism that it
has located major technology center on the Mexican
side, employing about 3,000 people. Some 30 UTEP
graduates work there.
Spoken
are as many as 20 languages besides Spanish,
including German, Japanese, Chinese and Russian.
Work starts at 5 a.m. so the Juarez specialists
can be in touch with other Delphi team mates
across the globe, from Asia to Europe, to the
U.S., says Michael Hissam, Delphi’s regional
director for communications in Mexico.
The
Juarez tech center works in a “virtual”
environment that uses the Internet and high speed
connections to exchange information on the design
of new car parts and other products. Doing so
extends each team’s work day so they can
accomplish more. Since opening in 1995, the Juarez
center has come up with 200 U.S. patents, Hissam
says.
Let’s
slip back to the parallel universe, this time to
my home of Chesterfield County. My local officials
are part of the vigilante squad. If they have
their way, business owners, including small ones
like me, may soon have to verify that we don’t
have any employees who are illegal immigrants.
If I
were Diana Ramirez, I’d think twice about
looking for a job in Chesterfield or Culpeper or
Dinwiddie or one of the other vigilante hotbeds.
Diana, forget the parallel universe and go for the
real world.
--
October 29, 2007
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