A crew from a Spanish language Christian radio station await listeners to arrive after going on the air to let them know they are there to pray for them in a parking lot along Buford Highway in Chamblee, Ga.

Immigrant Highway becoming New American South

CHAMBLEE, Ga. (Associated Press) March. 11, 2009 — Odilio Perez aches for a life beyond Buford Highway, a six-lane stretch of strip malls and ethnic diversity that cuts through three counties in the New American South.

The thick-shouldered Guatemalan settled along the artery leading out of Atlanta more than a decade ago, answering the call of local officials who used the springboard of the 1996 Summer Olympics to make immigrants a centerpiece of the community's rebirth. Vacant car lots and whitewashed stores gave way to affordable apartments, an eclectic mix of shops and towering business signs that are a study in polyglot.

More than a dozen languages are spoken along the thoroughfare, and in each, the question is often the same: Where does the immigrant highway ultimately lead? Hardened enforcement policies and stagnant green-card programs tell immigrants that America has limited use for them, yet the actions of local officials and employers in places like Buford Highway signal that they are a vital part of the future.

"I've lived and worked here for 10 years without a problem," Perez, 33, said recently in the English he has learned since entering the country illegally. "I'd love to be a citizen, if I had a chance. But I went to a lawyer but he told me there's just no way."

Perez is part of a massive movement of immigrants who've bypassed traditional destinations such as New York and Los Angeles in favor of the South, bringing rapid change to cities such as Charlotte, N.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; Orlando, Fla., and most recently, disaster-stricken New Orleans. In many cases, they've also settled in the suburbs instead of in urban pockets.

Perhaps no place captures the transformation as vividly as Buford Highway, where Korean shop owner Ruben Lee, for 20 years an expatriate in Argentina, rallies his workers in Spanish; where Chinese herbalist David Chu sells cure-alls in four Asian languages; and where Hispanic day laborers banter in Spanish and pre-Columbian dialects.

"This is not an enclave; this is a much newer phenomena," said Michael Fix, director of studies at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank based in Washington.

Unique array of groups

As much as Chamblee marks its success, however, it is under assault from a system that seems designed to defeat it.

Since the year Brannon established the International Village, nationwide workplace arrests on immigration violations have increased fivefold, and deportations of suspected illegal immigrants have doubled, according to Krikorian's group.

In 2006, law enforcement agencies in the Southeast followed the lead of their counterparts in the Southwest and enlisted in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement partnership that allows local officers to interview and fingerprint foreign-born people they detain.

Now the deportation program is closing in on Buford Highway. The Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department, which patrols communities just outside Chamblee, is awaiting final ICE approval to participate.

Even immigrants who want to be on the right side of the law stand little chance. The stepped-up enforcement has contributed to a decade-long backlog in legal residency applications and, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a wait list of about 1 million for citizenship.

Nikki Nguyen, 54, a Vietnam war refugee who petitioned for years to enter the U.S., relies on Hispanics and other ethnic groups to patronize her nail salon off Buford Highway. She knows all too well the backlog that many of her clients are facing.

Twelve years ago, Nguyen filed to sponsor her sister to join her in the U.S. The case is still pending.

"The lawyer tells me there are so many applications for spouses and children that with a sister, it takes longer," she said. "It shouldn't."

Day laborers who cluster along the highway have their own problems. Construction has dried up in the recession, and Buford Highway sometimes looks like it did in the old days. Several immigrant workers have set up tents in one of last wooded areas left on the strip.

Few plan to leave. With families in the U.S., a network of potential employers and several years invested in Chamblee's immigrant vision, their fortunes are aligned with the highway's.

"This country says it doesn't want us, but when there's a job to be done, it needs us," said Perez. "We see the two faces of this country up close, and it's sometimes hard to know which is the real one."