Kirsten Downey with the Washington Post framed her story last week about Arlington County and fears of illegal immigration just perfectly:
Arlington County, which prides itself on racial tolerance and economic diversity and has sneered at anti-immigrant policies in nearby jurisdictions, now finds itself facing some of the same questions.
Many longtime residents are voicing fears that a new zoning proposal will bring an influx of immigrants and poor people. Support for affordable housing initiatives is almost an article of faith in the Democrat-dominated enclave, but the proposal to allow rental units in single-family neighborhoods is challenging that orthodoxy.
At issue is a proposal to allow homeowners to add rental units to houses in single-family neighborhoods. Other jurisdictions permit “accessory dwellings” — garage apartments, granny flats, and such — and they’re touted by New Urbanists as a way to create affordable housing for students, young people, the elderly, domestics, laborers and others without creating income-segregated neighborhoods. By creating more affordable housing close to the Washington region’s urban core, the proposal also would allow people of modest means to live closer to where they work, which would eliminate long commutes and take traffic off the region’s congested arterial highways.
It makes sense in many ways, but the idea has spurred a vocal backlash among residents who fear the idea would “worsen parking problems, traffic congestion and crowding and increase the number of absentee landlords and illegal immigrants,” Downey reports.
Retiree Rick Barry, 75, said that he considers the plan a wrongheaded assault on Arlington’s way of life and that he fears it would attract immigrants displaced from Prince William County, which has enacted a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
“You work hard to get your family into a single-family neighborhood,” Barry said. “We have a very nice neighborhood character, and we should do whatever it takes to keep it as it is.”
Merryl Burpoe, a government relations consultant, said Arlington’s “beautiful, stable” neighborhoods are at risk.
“We moved here for the quality of life Arlington affords,” she said. “We paid a lot for our homes.”
So, here’s the big question
: Does this mean that the residents of Arlington County, an unofficial “sanctuary” jurisdiction and politically one of the most liberal, bluest-of-blue jurisdictions, are… racist? Are phrases like “overcrowding” and “traffic congestion” and “absentee landlords” just liberal white peoples’ code words for not wanting brown people around?
It’s one thing to lambaste retrograde attitudes towards illegal immigration when the people allegedly behaving in a retrograde manner are Republican-leaning troglodytes in Prince William County. Clearly, the issues they raise about noise and poor upkeep and too many cars parked in the yard are indirect expressions of prejudice.
Or maybe, just maybe, the clash over illegal immigration really isn’t about racism. Maybe it is a clash of cultures, reflecting the difficulty of integrating immigrants (legal or otherwise) accustomed to Third World villages and barrios, where certain norms of behavior are perfectly acceptable, into American suburbia, where those norms of behavior traditionally have been considered obnoxious.
It will be interesting indeed to see how the citizens of Arlington County resolve the tension between accepting all cultures as equally valid — especially when the foreign cultures reside at a comfortable distance — with the prospect of those cultures getting up front and personal.
(Hat tip: Larry Gross. The views expressed in this post are those of the author only and do not necessary represent the opinions of the hat tipper!)