Word: townes
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...just one sign that long before there was an immigration crisis in St. Helens, there was a globalization crisis. "This is a timber town that never came out of the recession in the 1980s," says Marcy Westerling, a longtime resident and pro-immigrant activist. Blessed by an abundance of Douglas fir and hemlock, the town once hummed with pulp plants, stud mills and palletmakers. A few decades ago, though, the mighty Columbia began delivering logs from Canada, then ready-made office paper from Asia. The financial swoon of 2008 was just a final insult to what remained of the town...
...work in the timber industry, as a lumber broker. But his more recent turn, as a general contractor, brought him face-to-face with an economic force he felt he could influence: illegal immigration. Although St. Helens has a relatively small Hispanic community - some legal, some illegal - the town is just 30 miles (about 50 km) from major population centers like Portland and Beaverton, close enough that out-of-town contractors with crews of underpaid, underdocumented construction workers began bidding on jobs around town eight years ago, says Mayo. Local contractors had a stark choice: either go out of business...
There are inevitably some racial tensions in St. Helens. Most residents probably don't care to know much more about Mexico than what they can glean from the menu of Muchas Gracias or the two other Mexican restaurants in town. Westerling, whose Rural Organizing Project canvassed St. Helens and surrounding towns as it fought against 5-190, says voters were truly undecided about the measure until the fall, when the worsening economy hardened their opinions. "Immigrants are serving as a great dog for people to kick when they're frustrated," says Westerling. But there is a sincerity to the most...
...toward a huge, silent box of a building. "That's where I worked," he said, "the plant with no smoke coming out of it." Even without a college degree, he had been making $24 an hour there, at the Boise Cascade paper mill, which was the town's largest employer. And then he was fired, along with most of the other employees, in January. Kristy had been running a home day-care center, but that income vanished when laid-off millworkers started taking care of their kids themselves. Douglas had her own sorry landmark, the ranch house across the street...
Choosing to Stay All this could be putting St. Helens at a competitive disadvantage to other towns in neighboring counties. Because the choice facing Margarito in the absence of a federal plan on immigration, it turns out, isn't St. Helens vs. Mexico but St. Helens vs. Woodburn, a heavily Hispanic town 60 miles (about 100 km) south with businesses that are still hiring (including at least one firm that just relocated from St. Helens...