How immigration roils tiny Georgian town

Here's a story on the frontpage of The Chicago Tribune:

CALHOUN, Ga. -- This is carpet country, home to the largest concentration of carpeting factories in the world. It is a place of abundant jobs and affordable housing--magnets for a growing population of Latino immigrants that some longtime residents see as a threat to their way of life.

Calhoun's 13,000 people are mostly working-class whites. But now nearly one out of six residents is from another country. Some whites see immigrants, legal or not, as unfair contenders in the competition for coveted jobs they have held for generations at the carpet mills. For the most part, they have accepted the changing demographics with apprehension, much as they reluctantly took to forced integration with African-Americans in the 1960s.

"[Immigrants] are hard-working people, but if they come to our country, the least they can do is learn to speak English," said William Crowder, 71, a retired factory worker who has lived in Calhoun for 30 years. "I'm too old to learn Spanish."

This city nestled in the rural foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains halfway between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn., was thrust this week into the middle of the national battle over undocumented workers. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a class-action lawsuit by one current and three former workers at Calhoun's largest employer, Mohawk Industries. The employees claimed that the firm has kept wages low for all employees by recruiting hundreds of undocumented laborers.

Both major political parties are underestimating how unpopular illegal immigration really is.