Sterling Park's Identity Crisis

Brocke and others say Sterling has been plagued by illegal boarding houses that rent rooms in single-family homes to illegal immigrants.

From July 2006 to June 2007, officials received 198 complaints of overcrowded homes, said Keith Fairfax, head of the county's residential overcrowding enforcement office. Only a few turned out to be boarding houses in which landlords rented homes to more than a dozen people, he said.

The county doesn't track what percentage of inspections turn up violations, Fairfax said. The most common examples of violations were people sleeping in basement rooms with windows that were too small under Virginia law or three people sleeping in a room considered big enough for only two.

Often, inspectors found Bible study groups, people coming by to assist sick relatives, well-wishers visiting newborn babies and similar get-togethers, Fairfax said.

Laura Valle, executive director of the Hispanic advocacy group La Voz of Loudoun, agreed that Sterling Park has seen better days. But she has a different explanation for the changes. Since the community was founded in the early 1960s, the buildings are beginning to show their age, she said. And in a county where the average single-family home costs $660,000, Sterling Park has less expensive, relatively affordable houses that attract people for whom survival, not household maintenance, is a top priority.

That includes new immigrants, especially Hispanics, who were attracted to the construction jobs that proliferated in fast-growing Loudoun during the past decade, she said.

Valle believes there could be a connection, though tenuous, between some of the problems the residents complain of and illegal immigration.

"There is a connection to the extent that if you are an undocumented immigrant, your capacity to improve your economic situation and integrate into society is greatly reduced," she said. "But in the scope of things, that's really insignificant. Even if you were to miraculously deport every undocumented person, these issues wouldn't go away."

A 37-year-old Sterling Park woman, who asked that her name not be used because she came to Virginia illegally from Mexico last year, bristles at the suggestion that her neighborhood is run down and overrun with gangs.

The Sterling Park home she rents from a relative is modestly furnished but tidy. A sprinkler sits idle in her yard. Four cars are lined up in the driveway, and the lamppost is wound with Christmas lights. She said she and her husband, their three children and three other family members live there.

"All of us -- my kids, too -- we work all the time, and it's sometimes hard to keep up with the house," she said with the aid of a translator. "But I think it looks pretty good."

Some activists believe the longtime residents' concerns reflect a desire to return to a time when their community was more homogenous.

The Census figures released last week show Loudoun's minority population is one of the fastest-growing in the nation. Sterling Park, in particular, has seen a striking increase in the Hispanic population: Last year, one in three students at the neighborhood's Park View High School was Hispanic, compared with about one in 10 in 2000, according to the state.

"The community has been changing very rapidly, and maybe much to the unhappiness of some residents, many of those new people are not lily-white," said Mukit Hossain, president of the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee, which is based in the Sterling area and has been organizing opposition to the resolutions. "There has been an influx of a lot of immigrants into this area, which I'm sure makes some people nervous."

The residents who called for the county's action say they are not racist; they are simply fed up with those who show up uninvited and then treat the community with disrespect.

"The issue is coming over here illegally, staying illegally and doing things illegally. It's about the rule of law," said Larry Wilber, 61, a remodeling contractor who has lived in Sterling Park for 11 years.

Mike Amos, 32, a paralegal who grew up in Sterling Park, said, "I've seen my home town completely transformed from what it used to be, and not for the better."

The strong anti-illegal immigrant stand among longtime Sterling Park residents is not surprising considering its political history. Until 2005, when Democrat David E. Poisson was elected in his place, Richard H. Black (R) represented the Sterling area in the House of Delegates for four terms. He was known as one of the state's most conservative politicians.

The area's representative on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors is Eugene A. Delgaudio (R), executive director of an anti-gay organization based in Falls Church. Delgaudio, who is up for reelection in November, was the main sponsor of the Loudoun resolution cracking down on illegal immigrants. In a note to constituents last month, he warned of "invasions of illegal aliens who turn safe neighborhoods into filthy, crowded slums."

The rhetoric disturbs Jeanne West, his Democratic opponent. She believes illegal immigration is a distraction from the real problems of the neighborhood: its age and the lack of attention paid to it by elected officials.

"I don't want to be this Pollyanna who says this it is not a problem, but I don't want to lay all of it at the feet of illegal immigrants," she said. "This is still a nice family neighborhood. Something needs to be done to make sure we get the amenities and the resources so we can keep the neighborhood desirable."

Brocke, Wilber and others say that they're not without compassion and that they welcome those who are in the country legally. It's those who flout the law that bother them, they said.

"I don't want someone coming to my country and building another dang country inside of it," Wilber said. "It's like if you came home and found someone in your house and you said, 'What are you doing here?' And they said: 'Oh, the door was open; I just came in. By the way, I'm going to change some other things in your home, too.' "

Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.