CHICAGO -- When Carpentersville made English its official language in 2007 and proposed fines for doing business with people illegally in the U.S., some Hispanic residents fled, leaving behind dozens of foreclosed-on homes. Tom Roeser, president of OTTO Engineering, the town's biggest employer, was alarmed.
"I could not afford for Carpentersville to become another Detroit, and it was going that way," he said.
But something surprising happened. As years passed, conditions started improving. Crime decreased, there was less graffiti, new businesses and more people moving in -- many of them Hispanic.
Recently, the Village Board rescinded the resolution making English the official language. The move runs counter to the national agenda set by President Donald Trump, who has made a priority of targeting illegal immigration.
Local officials say the English resolution caused nothing but controversy, and that progress came instead from targeting troublemakers, not Spanish speakers. Now, as one of the most diverse communities in the Chicago area, leaders hope to put the controversy behind them.
There's also the demographic and political reality that Hispanics now account for slightly more than 50 percent of Carpentersville's population of about 38,000, up from about 40 percent when the language measure was passed. Whites now make up about a third of the local populace, with most of the rest black or Asian-American.
The community about 40 miles northwest of Chicago is named for its first white settlers, brothers Charles and Daniel Carpenter, and its location along the Fox River supported its early big businesses, a flannel factory and iron foundry. But by the 1970s, large manufacturers in Carpentersville and nearby Elgin closed, leaving widespread unemployment.
As the original German, Swedish and Polish settlers left, Hispanic families from Chicago moved in. Amid the population shift and other societal changes, officials said, gangs began to proliferate, crime increased, school test scores fell, and retail stores went out of business. Residents said the river that gave rise to the village now was a dividing line between middle-class, white old-timers on the west, and lower-income, Hispanic manual laborers on the east. Resentment between the two sides grew.
In 2007, several white candidates ran for the Village Board on a platform of cracking down on people in the country illegally, arguing that the federal government's inaction was forcing their hand. They won.
The new trustees proposed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which would have denied a business permit to any employer who knowingly hired illegal workers, and fined landlords $1,000 for renting apartments to people in the country illegally. It was similar to a law that was passed in Hazleton, Pa., which was later shot down by an appeals court ruling that the measure was pre-empted by federal immigration laws.
The Carpentersville proposal prompted some 3,000 people to turn out at Village Hall, some bused in from Chicago, most of them opposed. The measure never passed, but then-trustee Judy Sigwalt called it a moral victory, and said the English language measure was meant to encourage assimilation.
None of the trustees who passed the original language measure remains on the board, whose makeup is still predominantly white, but their approach still has supporters. Before the vote to rescind the resolution, resident Tom Wall asked the board to keep English the official language, arguing that it would cost taxpayer money to print signs and forms in Spanish, and that English is the common tongue of the United States.
"I have nothing against anyone as long as they assimilate to our border's culture," he said, to applause from some in the audience of 50 or so people.
The new board argued that the ordinance was divisive, not unifying.
"All we're doing tonight is righting a wrong," trustee John O'Sullivan said. "We're righting an injustice that was clearly done by previous councils to make a point ... a very mean-spirited point that was specific to one group of people in the village."
One trustee, Diane Lawrence, cited her own family's experience as immigrants, while another, Kevin Rehberg, said the resolution had never been an issue to his constituents.
Lourdes Torres, a professor of Hispanic studies at DePaul University, welcomed the reversal of the English ordinance as a counter to a national trend.
"When you tell people you don't want them to speak their language, it's a proxy for saying you don't want them," she said. "The Village Board must be aware that the [Hispanic] community is valuable to them, so they're taking a more intelligent route, to support them rather than demonize them."
Still, it's a touchy subject. When asked about the change in local law, Village President John Skillman, a lifelong resident, downplayed it. He said village documents and meetings will continue to be in English, and he emphasized that the resolution made no concrete changes in the first place.
"It's just because it was time," he said regarding why the resolution was repealed. "I don't want to make a story out of it. It's done, we're moving forward. We expect people to learn the language, so it's not like we're giving anybody a break here."
The change comes as the economic prospects of the village appear to be turning around.
A Walmart and a Starbucks are new landmarks along the village's main commercial drag, Route 25, near numerous local Hispanic businesses like La Ilusion Bakery and La Alcancia Supermarket. Twenty-one new businesses opened last year, by the village's count. Unemployment is down, and the village embarked on a rebranding effort centered on the river.
In addition, after years of declines, the total value of property in the village has been going steadily up, with home prices exceeding pre-recession levels. The median household income in 2010 was about $55,000, less than surrounding suburbs but near the statewide average.
To address the foreclosure crisis, Roeser of OTTO Engineering and others bought up empty houses, renovated and sold them. His company employs more than 500 people, many of them Hispanic, and he said he screens out those who are not legally in the U.S.
For years, Roeser said he offered English as a second language classes to his workers. But not anymore. They all speak English now.
"There is no English problem anymore," he said. "Everybody wants to assimilate, but they don't want to lose their heritage. It takes a little while."
Law enforcement officials maintain that one turning point in the village came before the resolution, in the mid-2000s. That's when police began collaborating with the FBI and Kane County sheriff's office to rid the village of a predominantly Hispanic street gang, arresting and in some cases deporting its members.
And one of the reported centers of gang activity, a local apartment complex, was sold to new owners who renovated, adopted tougher screening of tenants and installed more than 30 security cameras, including license plate recognition video.
Some gang members remain, Police Chief Michael Kilbourne said, but the number of serious index crimes has fallen steadily, from nearly 1,100 in 2006 to 587 in 2015, the most recent year for which he had records.
A Section on 06/10/2018