Greenport's answer to the politics of xenophobia

Listening to the Republican candidates for president outdo each other in trashing immigrants is painful. From my vantage point, in a small Long Island village that is part of Southold Town with lots of Latino newcomers, it's crazy talk.

Donald Trump rambles on about Mexico sending its "rapists" to the United States just as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issue a report that heads in a very different direction. Written by immigration scholars, the report concludes that communities with large proportions of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence than those without.

A mere two years ago, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida supported a path to citizenship for immigrants here illegally. It was the centerpiece of the immigration reform bill that lived and died in the Senate. But now the presidential hopeful is down with some of his conservative presidential campaign donors. His new plan puts enforcement-first measures in front of a Rube Goldberg sequence of steps unlikely to yield citizenship for anyone before 2050.

I live in Greenport, population of about 2,200 in 2010, a knuckle on the long finger of the North Fork. Thirty-four percent of the residents are Hispanic, the highest proportion in the area. Most of the adults are immigrants here illegally; their children are American-born students who are the future voters and workers of the village. With very occasional exceptions, their crimes are usually limited to driving without a license and driving while intoxicated. They support the tourist economy by chopping vegetables in restaurant kitchens, planting hydrangeas for owners of second homes, and renovating lovely old houses that are investment properties for Airbnb landlords.

What kind of future will my new neighbors have if the politics of xenophobia prevail?

The scenarios vary. A 52-year-old house painter, from Bogotá, Colombia, probably will be least affected because he already operates a successful painting and staining business. Not even Trump will want to deport him and deprive his three workers and satisfied customers of his contributions to local prosperity. But he will have to continue relying on members of his family who are citizens to negotiate many financial and administrative necessities of his enterprise.

A young woman in her 20s from a mountain town near Guatemala City will face more immediate limitations. As a beneficiary of President Barack Obama's program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, she has moved on from pharmacy sales clerk to training as a nurse's assistant. But she is in limbo -- without permanent legal status or even the assurance that her temporary respite from deportation will be supported by a new president -- waiting for real reform.

Most vulnerable will be two men -- one, 20, from Guatemala City and one, 22, from El Salvador -- both of whom arrived in the country a couple of months beyond the cutoff age to be eligible for DACA. One has acquired advanced barbering skills and his English is improving, but he had little schooling at home and can't afford adult education. Although the other was a bright student in Greenport, enrolling in high school here at age 19, meant that he didn't have enough time to perfect his English and get the credits to graduate from a New York high school. If he isn't deported, he is likely to be "out of status" forever and would not even qualify to dig holes, as he does now, for a local contractor willing to ignore the rules about hiring people without documents.

Stories like these are not unique to Greenport. Communities all over the country are recovering from the small-town decline of the last few decades because immigrants have discovered them. Will anti-immigrant hostility reverse that trend?

Diana R. Gordon is the author of "Village of Immigrants: Latinos in an Emerging America."