Campbell Robertson cranked the melodrama up to eleven in his New York Times story on Tuesday on the upholding by a federal judge of a tough new immigration law in Alabama: “After Ruling, Hispanics Flee an Alabama Town – Fears Rise Over a Tough Law on Immigrants.” Robertson talked of “the vanishing” and dabbled in a little Creative Writing 101: “In certain neighborhoods the streets are uncommonly quiet, like the aftermath of some sort of rapture.”
Illegal immigration is prehaps the issue most likely to trigger the paper’s liberal bias, and Robertson doesn’t disappoint. In his dramatic telling, the flight from the town of Albertville, Ala., was like something out of a science fiction movie:
The vanishing began Wednesday night, the most frightened families packing up their cars as soon as they heard the news.
They left behind mobile homes, sold fully furnished for a thousand dollars or even less. Or they just closed up and, in a gesture of optimism, left the keys with a neighbor. Dogs were fed one last time; if no home could be found, they were simply unleashed.
Two, 5, 10 years of living here, and then gone in a matter of days, to Tennessee, Illinois, Oregon, Florida, Arkansas, Mexico -- who knows? Anywhere but Alabama.
The exodus of Hispanic immigrants began just hours after a federal judge in Birmingham upheld most provisions of the state’s far-reaching immigration enforcement law.
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For many immigrants, however, waiting seemed just too dangerous. By Monday afternoon, 123 students had withdrawn from the schools in this small town in the northern hills, leaving behind teary and confused classmates. Scores more were absent. Statewide, 1,988 Hispanic students were absent on Friday, about 5 percent of the entire Hispanic population of the school system.
John Weathers, an Albertville businessman who rents and has sold houses to many Hispanic residents, said his occupancy had suddenly dropped by a quarter and might drop further, depending on what happens in the next week. Two people who had paid off their mortgages called him asking if they could sell back their homes, Mr. Weathers said.
Grocery stores and restaurants were noticeably less busy, which in some cases may be just as well, because some employees stopped showing up. In certain neighborhoods the streets are uncommonly quiet, like the aftermath of some sort of rapture.
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Not far from the plant, in the Hispanic neighborhoods, it is hard to differentiate the silence of the workday, the silence of abandonment or the silence of paralyzing fear.
