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December 5, 2005
Welcoming immigrants
Nashville is becoming the site of a grand experiment in welcoming (and coping with) immigration, according to a recent article in the Carnegie Reporter:
Today, Nashville is a handbook for the nation, an index of mistakes and gains. It is certainly a much more exotic and cosmopolitan city, an eclectic collection of international food, art and entertainment. Three Hispanic-themed films were featured in this year's Nashville Film Festival. Austin Peay State University opened a Hispanic Cultural Center this year and an exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts includes the star-spangled couture of Mexican-native designer Manuel. The country music duo Big and Rich has incorporated bilingual rap into their musical repertoire.
But a poll conducted by Middle Tennessee State University in 2002 indicated that negative feelings about immigrants and refugees are increasing in middle Tennessee. Hispanics are making life worse, according to forty-one percent of those surveyed, compared with twenty-eight percent in 1998. Negative reactions to Middle Easterners were reported by thirty-nine percent of respondents, while fifteen percent said the same about Asians. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed believed that U.S. immigration policy is "too open."
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies says Nashville's reactions to the immigrant and refugee influx is an indicator of the mood in the rest of the nation. "Nationally, there's always a divide between public opinion and the elite opinion," he says, "and that's the case in Nashville and other cities. The mayor, the businessmen and the preacher of the Presbyterian church may have one reaction to their arrival, but the local union president may say another thing."
So as Nashville is forced to confront a critical crossroads in its history, the perennial question nags: Will the "Tocquevillian paradise" teeter as state budgets are pinched and social service demands increase? Can the city's economy sustain and tolerate an open-gate policy? Will it provide a blueprint for national immigration reform? Can the city become a truly diverse compendium of mixed races and cultures?
It also remains to be seen whether and how Nashville develops and markets this cultural mélange in today's creative economy. The question is not so much can the economy sustain the open gate policy as it is whether the open gate policy will pay off economically. So far it has as the influx of workers filled the need in the growing hospitality and manufacturing industries (including at the new Nissan and Saturn plants). Will the cultural mix and the environment of openness now help develop Nashville's jurisdictional advantage - rather than simply provide bodies to fill existing slots? Stay tuned to this test of the theory of the Creative Economy.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at December 5, 2005 4:47 PM
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