"The Family That Planted Corn In The Front Yard Of Their $500,000 Home Is Gone"
By Bill Dupray Posted in Immigration — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It has been one year since Prince William County, Virginia began its crackdown on illegals. Many have fled to Maryland, a very Blue sanctuary state. Though Marylanders don't like it, their lawmakers refuse to respond to the problem. The self-deportation by Hispanics from the "Devil's County," or as they call it in Spanish, Condado del Diablo, was noted back in March by the Washington Post in a series of stories.
Today's Washington Post gives us an update in an article entitled "A Hispanic Population in Decline." Gotta love this first part. It seems not all people fully appreciate the great multi-cultural influences that diversity brings to a neighborhood.
The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.
Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. "So much has changed," she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.
Corn stalks and handguns. What a neat blending of cultures.
One thing is clear though, Hispanics are leaving.
Anecdotes of the trend outstrip hard statistical evidence, yet there are clear signs that the county's Latino population has reversed its pace of rapid growth. County officials said there are 4,000 to 7,000 vacant homes in the county. Trustee notices fill the classified section of area newspapers, chronicling the steady, staggering forfeiture of properties by homeowners with Hispanic surnames such as Mendez, Lozano, Medina and Rodriguez.
While this is causing a drop in home values, some people think that quality of life is paramount to home values. After all, no home is worth its former value after the neighborhood goes to hell in a handbasket.
That decrease -- home prices in some areas have fallen by half -- is well worth the improvement in quality of life, according to the most ardent supporters of the county's get-tough approach.
"We have far less residential overcrowding, and that was driving people crazy," said Greg Letiecq, a blogger and president of Help Save Manassas. He helped write the county's policy and has been its most vocal champion. "We'd much rather live next door to a vacant house," he said, speaking for his members at a recent Help Save Manassas meeting.
"With an empty house, there's hope that the house is going to have somebody move into it that's going to be a good neighbor, rather than an overcrowded house that is a neighbor from hell," Letiecq said, adding that his Manassas area home has dropped $100,000 in value in the past year.
Another big factor is law enforcement's focus on catching illegal immigrant criminals.
While some Hispanic immigrants have walked away from their homes, others have left the county in the custody of federal agents. County jail officials have turned over 757 illegal immigrant inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the past year through an agreement that county supervisors approved as part of the crackdown.
Police have referred more than 300 additional suspects to the immigration and customs branch since March, when the county's patrol officers began screening for residency status.
Catching illegal immigrants has made Prince William safer, said Corey A. Stewart (R-At-Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors said. Stewart also said the county's policies have led to "a plummeting of the crime rate."
When Prince William County's program levels off, and the illegals have largely relocated to Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria, or to Maryland (all controlled by Democrats), the quality of life will improve, property values will rebound, and maybe folks won't have to watch their neighbors harvest corn from the front yard.
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To those of us next door in Fairfax, it looks like the Running of the Bulls coming our way.
People take their property values a wee bit seriously up here.
Hope is not a plan. Change is not always good.
Not really -- I bought into PWC in 2001 and moved in 2002. What actually happened along Route 1 versus what we were told by the builder and then County Supervisor Hilda Barg is the exact opposite of what actually happened. I made the mistake of stopping by the 7/11 one morning for coffee. I was driving my truck and the swarm of men shouting in Spanish and actually attempting to open the door was frightening.
Unfortunately, the crowd of men is still there. I don't fault someone who wants to work. I do fault those who break the law. I never walk outside my immediate neighborhood and I hesitate to walk inside mine after dark. Another year of the PWC resolution and maybe I may be willing to do so.
M Penny
...people who speak Spanish are very scary.
Gar
Nothing stops Fairfax from doing the same things and getting the same benefits.
Nothing stops all of America from just enforcing the laws we already have.
"Nothing stops all of America from just enforcing the laws we already have."
Well Neil there is this annoying thing called “the left,” which often tries to undermine if not stop the enforcement of laws, but good point nonetheless.
Please sign Newt's Drilling Petition. I have included a link to it in the below. Thank you.
because unless the illegals are deported, they stay local. Yes, Fairfax could do the same, but will not. We are about to elect Democrat Gerry Connolly to fill Republican Tom Davis's Congressional seat.
The point was only that somebody gets them.
You assume that these people are tied to a locality, which I think is ridiculous, given that they've illegally ventured from Mexico and points south to Virginia and Maryland of all places.
I think it was Oklahoma recently that proved you can clear people out of a whole state just by enforcing sensible laws. And in fact the illegals cleared out in advance of the law taking effect.
If we actually just did it everywhere, they'd clear out of the country because they'd have no choice.
Not only did they clear out, but now there are efforts to get the bill repealed that required the enforcement of those basic laws.... It works and it scares the Democrats when conservative plans work.
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Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
57 states and not enough fingers. Needs a federal solution. Obviously the Comprehensive Amnesty Act of 2009 will make this entire issue moot. Still, once in a while it's kinda cool to rearrange the deck chairs.
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NObama...no way!.....McCain '08 !
Okay -- I don't mind that my property taxes went up $1,000 this year. You see 20% of the students in PWC were in ESOL classes and our school budget was millions in the red. So every time I hear a parent speak Spanish to their children I ask for a dollar. I recommend all PWC property owners do the same.
Maybe this will help these immigrants --as Obama says -- eventually learn English.
M Penny
Please sign Newt's Drilling Petition. I have included a link to it in the below. Thank you.
I was thinking that myself. As well as the part about drilling holes in trees for hammocks.
Their land, they can do what they want.
Now, the littering I do have an issue with as it blows around and gets into other people's land.
You don't have a right to throw your trash around where it'll get in my yard.... but it is your property, grow corn if you want.
Frankly, a few rows of corn make a good sound block.
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Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
the method of "watering" and "fertilizing" the crop that most neighbors find objectionable.
Now I understand the off the deck pissing contests that many men engage in during evening crowded parties, but in PWC boarding houses with and inadequate number of bathrooms per number of residents crop up -- and the end result was the the neighbors using the toilet outdoors without benefit of a privy.
M Penny
At what point do property rights end so as to not offend people in the general area?
My family, briefly, owned land in Wisconsin by a river. There was nothing there but forest.
My father and I went up to this land to clear out some trees so that we could bring a trailer up there to go camping. Fully self-contained trailer.
While we were clearing trees, we had no access to a bathroom and the nearest town was around 30 minutes away.
So, the first thing we did when we got there was build an outhouse. We were wholly surrounded by trees and it was a 5 minute walk to get to the road (in fact, where we put the outhouse, we couldn't even HEAR cars go by.) so we had no top on the outhouse.
We cleared the trees and went home. A month or so later, we treked back out there with the camper-trailer. Fully self-contained trailer.
There was a notice tacked to the underside of the toilet lid seat that we had violated county law and needed to go to the county offices in the town half an hour away.
We get there and they tell us that there is no camping allowed in the county. At all. Not even in a self-contained camper trailer.
Why? because people poop.
He ranted about how he had to, just a few days before, go and clean up where someone took a dump in the woods.
The first question in MY mind was "What about the bears and deer? They poo."
Property rights matter. If they are doing something in view of the public, you may have a point. But no, there is no issue with growing corn in the front lawn, even if they pee on the corn in the middle of the night.
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Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
If this wasn't visible from outside the property, the sheriff had to be trespassing to find it.
But I'm not surprised that Wisconsin is a nanny state.
Pluto, the Ninth Planet - Forever!
Oh yes, they admitted to not just answering calls, but when answering a call, they'll randomly walk around to other properties in order to snoop.
This wasn't a residential area, but a forested area, ideal for hunting and camping. Except that you weren't allowed to do either.
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Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
...to celebrate.
"PsychObama, qu'est-ce que c'est?"
"PsychObama, qu'est-ce que c'est?"
Impeach the 5 usurpers
No need to point them all out, but this story contains quite a few points that illustrate the many problems of illegal immigration, made worse when the illegals all come from the same impoverished background.
Pluto, the Ninth Planet - Forever!
A lot of other places will quietly adopt as many of PWC's policies as they can get away with...
Hope is not a plan. Change is not always good.