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Thursday
March 28th, 2024

irby community forumLocal citizen Elizabeth Irby speaks at the recent community forum concerning racial relations in the community. The topic was a hot one for the Liberal City Commission the past couple meetings. L&T photo/Elly GrimmELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part three of the story recapping the recent community forum hosted earlier this week regarding racial relations and will recap community members’ testimonies about immigration. 

Immigrants are a large part of the Liberal community and Southwest Kansas area and in recent times, efforts have been made at the federal level to curb immigration. 

Tuesday evening, members of the Liberal community had the chance to speak at a community forum and give their thoughts on the issue and how it affects Liberal. 

“The first thing I have to say is thank you to the chief and new deputy chief, you guys have done a great job getting started that outreach to help bridge some gaps in the community and have that ongoing communication and addressing our concerns,” local citizen Kathleen Alonso said. “I would say my biggest frustration, at the city and county levels, is there are issues we’re dealing with that aren’t being acknowledged. I work at LHS as a para and work with a lot of refugee immigrants who have been here less than a year and with all of that, they have to do all the necessary immigration work and pay attorney fees, so many of them do have to work. These children work at many of the businesses you all visit, they work at many of the restaurants you all eat at, but many of them don’t get fairly paid. So as an undocumented immigrant, who do you go to when you’re somewhere where you don’t really have a voice? I want some acknowledgement at the city level, I don’t really feel there’s that representation for the immigrant community. We need to build that up. I want to know what steps the city will take to help alleviate the concerns of the immigrants in the community?”

“We really can’t say anything right now on behalf of the city, that would have to take place during a meeting and any policy would have to be done by the commission. We’d love to hear suggestions about how to help with that,” Liberal City Commissioner Ron Warren said. “Maybe I’m somewhat naive about these things and need to be enlightened, but we’ll definitely take suggestions and if there is something actionable we can do, we’ll do it as a commission.”

“The reason I ask is because Chief Cutshall and Deputy Chief Way have made the effort to sit down with us weekly, and I’m very appreciative of that, especially since they’re both new to the community,” Alonso said. “They’ve made an aggressive attempt to address our concerns, but it feels like that’s less so at the city level. Do we have to schedule a visit with you and talk at your office, or what exactly?”

“I think something that might help is understanding what the job of the city commission is. The city manager handles most of the day-to-day stuff of the city and as a commission, we make budget and policy decisions,” Warren said. “We don’t have offices at City Hall. So I think it would be helpful to fully understand what it is we do, I’ve had people come to the meetings with suggestions about things we don’t actually control, so there’s that gap as well as far as what we can do and what we can’t do. We allow all citizens to have a voice and we encourage people to come to the meetings, but there are things we don’t actually have any control over.”

Forum coordinator Ivanhoe Love Jr. acknowledged the frustration of the issue.

“This is a very frustrating issue, and when you have a concern like the ones that have been raised here, there has to be an avenue for people to express those, there has to be an open way for people to do that,” Love said. “Unless you vote people in key offices who can actually affect change, there’s not going to be change – I said that several years ago and it still holds true today. This is a tough subject and something has to happen. I’m very upset many of those doors have been closed to where people can express their concerns over either being discriminated against or having witnessed some type of discrimination. There has to be that avenue so people can take those concerns to people who can actually do something about it. The Hispanic community in this town is a sleeping giant that needs to wake up – if you can get people to run for office and get elected, and if they hold up their end of their promises, there is a lot of action that will happen. And getting people to run for office and other key positions is something that’s been an issue for several years now, we need passionate people of all types to run for the school board, the city commission, the county commission – we need passionate people on those boards who can affect real change.”

“My concern is these young individuals are working, they’re renting living space, but they’re not getting paid properly. They’re getting charged rent that is sky high,” local citizen Elizabeth Irby said. “How many people in this room sit on commissions, rent homes/apartments and treat someone differently who isn’t my color? That’s not right, and there are laws against that. Just like Kathleen said, where is that avenue for these people to use in order to get assistance since they’re undocumented? We vote all of you into office to serve the community, we vote for our government. Those laws that were enacted are here already, so where is that avenue for people to get help?”

Local citizen Janeth Vazquez then spoke before the gathered crowd to dispel some of the misinformation regarding immigration. 

“There are many people in our community who are currently undocumented, and many of them are going through a depression and hard times because of what’s going on. And because of that, they’re not going to address elected officials or law enforcement about something they’re afraid of,” Vazquez said. “We talked about having a sense of belonging and I will tell you, our undocumented community does not feel that sense of belonging right now. Things like using the terms ‘illegal aliens’ or ‘illegal immigrants,’ that’s contributing to that disconnect and at a recent event I spoke at, I shared several parts of my own story and I’ve been told time and time again emotions aren’t enough and just my story isn’t enough, there need to be facts included. So some facts are first off, those who come here undocumented don’t do so because they want to – they came this way because it was their only avenue to a better future. A lot of families who came here didn’t come here illegally as many people imagine, they come with a border visa and then overstay it, and they overstay it because there’s no clear avenue to residency, which means there’s no clear path to citizenship. As of right now, the only way to get residency is to marry a U.S. citizen, or your parents must be U.S. citizens, or you have to have a sibling sponsor you – right now, however, there’s a waiting list from that dating all the way back to 1993, and who is going to just sit here in the U.S. waiting for a chance in a million of their application going through?”

Vazquez then talked about some other common misconceptions.

“There are also several other misconceptions, the chief one being how undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes, but in fact, they pay state, federal, sales and property taxes and the last report from the Institute of Taxation Economic Policy showed undocumented workers paid a total of $11.7 billion in state and federal taxes, so I would ask people to quit saying undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes, because they do,” Vazquez said, “They also paid roughly $7 billion in sales taxes, which include vehicle registrations. That money goes toward highway repairs, other infrastructure work, and for police and firefighters. They also pay $1.1 billion in state income taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes as of the last report. This is money that helps fund public schools and essential city services. In federal taxes, they pay more than probably most of us, and they do it through their employer, or they use an ITIN, which is the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Undocumented immigrants contributed $13 billion into the social security fund and $3 billion to Medicare. That’s a lot of money. On top of all of that, our school districts get tax money for every student enrolled. Also keep in mind, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal benefit programs – there are too many people who say undocumented immigrants take up too much of our federal resources like food stamps and Medicaid and supplemental security income, etc., but that’s false because you have to be a U.S. citizen or resident to qualify for those things. There was actually a study done by Wichita State University stating how rural communities are expected to grow in the next few years because of immigrants who are coming in. Seward County has actually remained pretty steady in that regard, thanks to the influx of immigrants. So I ask people to please stop spreading misinformation and quit spreading information that is not accurate.”

Local citizen Earl Watt added  overall, Liberal is not totally helpless when it comes to immigration policy.

“I know when it comes to immigration, many will say we’re helpless since it’s more of a federal issue, but we’re really not – everything that’s now a federal law started out as a local issue somewhere,” Watt said. “One of the best things we can do is advocate for ourselves, we have the best opportunity to create solutions to this sort of issue – why shouldn’t we be able to? Some time ago, I worked with Ernie Schaffer on a plan to help with immigration and it was sent to two different presidents, two different senators, a representative, and got exactly zero response. This plan would make every immigrant here legal tomorrow. Everyone talks about needing reform, but it seems like no one wants to actually do anything about it. We’re the best people to address this and put together a plan that moves up and gets traction if we can get the entire community behind it. We have to quit thinking we’re helpless, we can make proposals to the federal level as well. I want to see us work on things like this, let’s start that here.”