Immigration is one of the top issues in the country right now as hundreds of undocumented immigrants cross the border every day. But have you ever wondered why there is a large immigrant population in the Valley?

One local filmmaker tries to answer that question in a documentary he produced called "The Latino Underground." Filmmaker Brent Finnegan wanted to address a topic he thought people don't know much about: illegal immigration.

They're in our community. We see them at the grocery store and at the mall. And Finnegan asked the question, are they really part of our community or are they a separate community, co-existing in the Valley, and living secret lives.

The documentary focuses on why immigrants from Latin America migrate to North America, especially the Shenandoah Valley.

"I feel like there's a lot of people here, and like myself, where you know that they live here, you read that they live here, and maybe every once in a while you run into them at a supermarket. I got the sense that they are underground, that they are staying underneath this cover of secrecy and I think they're doing that for their own good. They're trying to look out for their own. They don't want to cause trouble and get arrested," says Finnegan.

Finnegan believes the two separate cultures stem from the language barrier and the feeling that, according to immigration law, they're not supposed to be here.

"You know, this area looks very different now than it looked even ten years ago, and it's going to look very different ten years from now than it looks now. So I think there is a resistance to change and the ethnic makeup of the city," says Finnegan.

Since the Valley offers low unemployment, Finnegan says immigrants find their way to this area.

"In doing research and interviewing people, I found that a lot of them really wanted to move into other jobs and other sectors of the economy and at the same time there's a large demand for poultry products and a housing development boom," says Finnegan.

Many of the jobs associated with these two areas are ones Finnegan says college-educated people won't do. And he says the illegal immigration won't go away. It's a nation-wide issue that local governments are trying to take on.

"I don't think that if these towns passed these ordinances or municipalities passed these ordinances, I don't think that it's going to make these people go back to their home country," says Finnegan. "In fact I know it won't. They're going to go somewhere else. It's going to be a shifting around of these problems."

Although Finnegan could not really pinpoint the reasons why so many immigrants flee to the Valley and what the future holds for the area, he hopes his documentary will bridge the gap between the two communities and help each side understand each other a little better.

"It was never my goal to change someone's mind about whether people should be here illegally or not. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinions about that. I'm just trying to give the facts," says Finnegan.

With 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US, Finnegan believes the federal government will have to step up at some point. But how and when are the questions, because he says for the immigrants that cross the border there's nothing for them to go back to. They raise their children here, and they plan on staying for as long as they can.