It has been a relief to see local officials’ reassurances that they would not willingly become adjunct agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Whether with proper documents or not, new migrants to our area are part of the economic and social fabric of the East End. It may be safe to assume that many, if not the majority, of these people would seek legal status to be here in the United States — if a process to do so were available.
Immigrant labor has helped keep the Hamptons humming for decades, longer if one includes late-19th and early-20th-century mostly Irish and Italians who worked on the estates of the oceanfront rich. The first stirrings of a Spanish-speaking wave came in the 1980s, with just a handful of men arriving and finding work largely in the landscaping trade.
One young guy I knew left a few big plastic trash bags of his possessions in our barn while he returned to his home in Mexico in the winters. After a few years, he married and obtained legal status and started his own business. His wife, a nurse, found work in the area, and their children enrolled in school. East Hampton is their home now, as it is for so many others who were on similar trajectories to have better lives.
Speaking with a manager at a big landscaping company recently, I asked about its work force and what effect an ICE raid would have. At least 10 percent of the employees, he guessed, would be taken away. U.S. census figures put the number of people in Suffolk without proper status at about 50,000; this seems low, but who knows? My point is that whether legally here or not, immigrants are part of our community. We have tacitly welcomed them and the essential services they provide. We cannot turn our backs on them now.