A Tale of Two Cities

ESCONDIDO and National City share the lowest rungs of San Diego County’s median-household- income ladder. But brothers in arms they are not. In separate calls to action on illegal immigration, the tales of these two not-so-neighborly cities have been wildly opposite. Escondido swerved right. National City banged a hard left. If not for the metaphorical wall dividing their politics, the cities would be warily glancing back at each other in their rear-view mirrors.

What were they thinking?

Before leaving office, National City Mayor Nick Inzunza declared—to what became a national audience—that his city should be considered an immigrant “sanctuary.” As such, no municipal resources would ever be used to enforce federal immigration laws. Critics say the pronouncement all but invites undocumented immigrants.

“The mayor of National City is a little off the wall,” says Escondido Mayor Pro Tem Ed Gallo. “I don’t know why they did this action. I don’t know, I guess they’re a counterbalance.”

Yes, a counterbalance to Escondido— where the city council tenuously voted 3-2 to force landlords to check the citizenship of their tenants. Essentially, landlords would be placed—it’s currently on hold—in the position of enforcing national immigration law.

“They are saying you can work there, but you can’t live there,” says Inzunza. “Escondido is trying to be a white city. And that’s wrong. It’s segregation—and that’s all our faults.”

Who knew sunny San Diego could host such frigid, polar conditions?

ROUGHLY TWO-THIRDS of National City’s population of 63,000-plus is Hispanic, according to a San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) estimate. It’s the second-oldest city in San Diego County (incorporated in 1887), and it’s made a recent forward pass at becoming home to a new Chargers football stadium.

Inzunza has had a rough term— which ends officially on December 5. The San Diego Union-Tribune bombed Inzunza’s immediate political future with a report on several poorly maintained apartment buildings owned by His Honor and family.

So why, on his way out the door, did Inzunza declare the city a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants?

“One part of it was response to other cities in the county, and one part of it was me being consistent with my actions as mayor,” he says. “I was restating and memorializing past policy.

“Was it grandstanding? [U.S. Representatives] Brian Bilbray and Duncan Hunter, with their triple fence at the border, are grandstanding. The three councilmembers in Escondido are grandstanding. I’m countergrandstanding, and using my pulpit as mayor to talk about an important issue.”

But is an offer of sanctuary an invitation to undocumented immigrants?

“There are already 250,000 illegal immigrants in the county,” says Inzunza. “They’re already here. They don’t need an invitation.”

In National City, Inzunza’s sanctuary declaration was praised by activists and decried by the pro-border-tightening Minute Men organization. National City Councilmember (and newly elected mayor) Ron Morrison, though, has harsh words for all of the above.

“We had already addressed the whole issue,” says Morrison. “We had policy in place for our police department. We were not going to be an arm for the INS, and we are not going to do sweeps. We are just going to uphold our local laws.

“The mayor’s proclamation was reckless and irresponsible—it was a purely political way for an elected official with 60 days left in office to get on national TV. Yes, some groups do back the mayor, but they’re not from National City. They want to use National City for their fight, and I asked them and the Minute Men to please leave. I am happy to take a stance on city issues, but this is not a problem of ours. We don’t have day laborers on the streets or living in our canyons.”

IT WAS INCORPORATED as a city in 1888. But given its recent appearance in the spotlight, Escondido may want to consider a name change, given that “escondido” is Spanish for “hidden.” The current population is 140,000. Since 1990, the Latino population has nearly tripled to 61,000, or 43 percent, while the white population has decreased by 9,000, to 66,000, according to SANDAG.

The controversial measure passed by the city council calls for citizens to file written complaints if they suspect a landlord is renting to an illegal immigrant. Complaints solely based on race would be invalid, if this shaky legislation stands.

Escondido’s city politicians are parttime. Mayor Pro Tem Gallo is also a sales associate for McMillin Realty. (I got Gallo’s phone number from the city’s chamber of commerce renters list. I was looking for comment from landlords on the feasibility of checking tenants’ immigration documents. He was the only landlord I found willing to talk on the record.)

“People are leaving Escondido because they can’t and don’t want to live in the homes they’ve had all their lives,” says Gallo. “It’s too many cars; too much noise . . . Yes, it’s the illegal immigration that causes the overcrowding. Illegals have to stay under the radar. So you wind up with mul-

tiple families living in one home. And the areas where these homes are have become slums. Why? Because the residents won’t complain. “We now have a slum on Elder Place. And we had to build a new school two blocks from Pioneer and Lincoln [streets]. There hasn’t been a new residence built in that area in years. But there is the overcrowding—and no additional funds. So that’s where our tax dollars went.

“I’m told that as bad as the living conditions here are, they’re better than where they came from. But that’s not my problem.” Hazleton, Pennsylvania, was the first city to pass a landlord-as-immigration-enforcer law. Hazleton currently faces a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. (The ACLU has also filed a lawsuit in Escondido.)

“You know, if Hazleton hadn’t been first, we probably wouldn’t have done this,” says Gallo. “And—write this down—people say this is going to cost the city money in legal defense, but we’re already getting calls nationwide from people willing to donate to our defense fund.”

NATIONAL CITY’S Morrison is perplexed by Escondido’s move. “If overcrowding is the problem, then pass an ordinance on the number of occupants per bedroom in a house,” he says. “And does their complaint-based process fix the problem of overcrowding if all the residents of a home are legal?”

Morrison fears the perception being forged here. Asked if it appears the message being sent is that white people should move to Escondido and brown people should move to National City, he says, “That’s the appearance, and that’s sad in both cases.”

The federal government needs to set policy, or the battles will increase and the lines will grow deeper, he believes. The North County city of Vista is already inflamed over a law that makes it harder for day laborers to get jobs.

“There was a Congressional bill two years ago [which didn’t pass] that called on local law enforcement to strongly enforce immigration laws,” Morrison says. “But it was an unfunded mandate. And even when we asked the federal government what the immigration policy was, we couldn’t get an answer. . .”

Indeed. If Representative Hunter’s $8 billion triple fence at the border is the long and short of our national immigration policy, then the answer to the Escondido/National City conundrum is already blueprinted. You pour the concrete, and I’ll grab a shovel. And when we build the fence between North County and the South Bay, we’ll leave space for a trolley line. So the National City workforce can travel efficiently to the day jobs up for grabs in Escondido.

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