Posted on 06/20/2006 10:03:04 AM PDT by Liz
An Open Letter from Mayor Lou Barletta:
I believe the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth. People who are in this country have an incredible amount of opportunities and blessings. But some people have taken advantage of America’s openness and tolerance. Some come to this country and refuse to learn English, creating a language barrier for city employees. Others enter the country illegally and use government services by not paying taxes or by committing crime on our streets, further draining resources here in Hazleton.
Illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates, contributes to overcrowded classrooms and failing schools, subjects our hospitals to fiscal hardship and legal residents to substandard quality of care, and destroys our neighborhoods and diminishes our overall quality of life.
The City of Hazleton is empowered and mandated by the people of Hazleton to abate the nuisance of illegal immigration by aggressively prohibiting and punishing the acts, policies, people and businesses that aid and abet illegal aliens. That is why I proposed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act.
Part of this ordinance, if enacted, would punish companies that hire illegal immigrants by denying them permits, making it harder for them to renew permits and forcing their loss of city business.
Another part would hold landlords accountable. Because people moving into the city naturally require a place to sleep, our landlords are our first line of defense. Landlords who rent to illegal immigrants—that is, who rent to people without checking their documentation, may be fined $1,000.00 for every illegal immigrant staying on their properties.
The final part of this ordinance makes English the official language of Hazleton. All city documents will only be available in English. Those applying for a permit would have to speak English. While our emergency services will never be denied to anyone because of a language barrier, every other aspect of city business will be conducted only in English. Let me be clear, this ordinance is intended to make Hazleton one of the most difficult places in the U.S. for illegal immigrants.
This measure is not racist because it does not target one particular race. The Illegal Immigration Relief Act is intended to deter and punish any illegal immigration in the City of Hazleton. Requiring the use of English does not target any other language; it merely states that no matter what language you prefer to speak at home, English will be spoken when you conduct business with Hazleton officials.
Illegal Immigration is a drain on city resources. Every domestic incident, every traffic accident, every noise complaint, each time we send our police department, fire department or code enforcement officer to respond, it costs taxpayer dollars.
If the City of Hazleton began publishing official documents or conducting business in a second language, how would we respond when someone asks us to use a third, or fourth language?
Recent crimes – the shooting on Chestnut Street, the discharge of firearms at the Pine Street Playground, and high profile drug busts – have involved illegal immigrants. Sadly, some of those allegedly involved in those crimes were detained by other law enforcement officials over the years, but were somehow allowed to remain in this country. They eventually migrated into Hazleton, where they helped create a sense of fear in the good, hardworking residents who are here legally.
This ordinance does not roll back the welcome mat to those who are legally in the United States. This country was built on the backs of legal immigrants. My own great grandparents came to this country seeking a better life. Rather, this ordinance seeks to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into Hazleton. They are not welcome here!
To the residents of Hazleton, I say thank you for your continued support. Hazleton is moving forward and becoming an even better place to live. To our recently arrived legal immigrants, I say welcome. I personally wish you all the best. With hard work and determination, the United States and Hazleton can be a place where your dreams come true. And to illegal immigrants and those who would hire or abet them in any way, I say your time is up. You are no longer welcome.
If you support this measure, please click this link to email us your support . You can also show your support by attending the City Council meeting on Thursday, June 15th @ 7:00 P.M. where this ordinance will be presented to Council for approval. The next council meeting where the second reading will take place is July 13th @ 7:00 P.M. Please mail your petition in before that date to show your support. You may also contact my office at 570-459-4910.
Thank you and God Bless America.
LOU BARLETTA Mayor, City of Hazleton
http://www.hazletoncity.org/home_frameset.htm
City to crackdown on illegal immigration Yahoo News ^ | June 20, 2006
SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060620/ap_on_re_us/illegal_immigrants_crackdown_4
With tensions rising and its police department and municipal budget stretched thin, this small northeastern Pennsylvania city is about to begin what the mayor calls one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigrants in the United States.
"Illegal immigrants are destroying the city," said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. "I don't want them here, period."
Last week Barletta introduced, and the City Council tentatively approved, a measure that would revoke the business licenses of companies that employ illegal immigrants; impose $1,000 fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants; and make English the city's official language.
As Congress debates changes to the nation's immigration policy, some cities are taking matters into their own hands, saying they have no choice but to crack down on illegal immigrants themselves.
Barletta said he had to act after two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic were charged last month with shooting and killing a man. Other recent incidents involving illegal immigrants have rattled this former coal town 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, including the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for firing a gun at a playground.
"This is crazy," said Barletta, who took office in 2000. "People are afraid to walk the streets. There's going to be law and order back in Hazleton and I'm going to use every tool I possibly can."
In San Bernardino, Calif., voters will decide whether to adopt a measure similar to the one in Hazleton. Elsewhere, an Idaho county filed a racketeering lawsuit against agricultural companies accused of hiring illegal immigrants. In New Hampshire, a pair of police chiefs began arresting illegal immigrants for trespassing.
"They're being forced to pick up the financial tab for all of this nonsense and they are doing whatever they can to find ways to combat it at the local level," said Susan Tully, national field director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates limits on immigration.
But Flavia Jimenez, an immigrant policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza, said local authorities typically are not equipped to enforce immigration laws. She predicted the Hazleton crackdown would prompt a civil rights lawsuit.
When Barletta took office in 2000, only about 5 percent of the city's 23,000 residents were Hispanic. The population has since shot up to 31,000, with Hispanics now comprising 30 percent, lured to Hazleton by cheap housing, a lower cost of living, and jobs in nearby plants, factories and farms.
City officials don't know how many of the new arrivals are in the U.S. illegally, but say they are fueling the drug trade, joining gangs and committing other crimes.
Barletta's office has been flooded with hundreds of approving e-mails and phone calls — from as far as California and Florida — and he got an impromptu standing ovation when he walked into a Hazleton diner for lunch.
"It's about time," said Francis X. Tucci, 57, who was born and raised in Hazleton and owns a hair salon with tiny American flags in the window in the heart of the Hispanic business district. "We were a nice community. You find bad everywhere, I understand that, but we're talking about here and now."
Hispanics are divided. Some approve, saying they are fed up with crime and graffiti. "If I was mayor, I wouldn't let anyone in who had a criminal record," said Rafael Rovira, 69, a naturalized American citizen from the Dominican Republic.
Others view the proposal as punitive and unnecessary, saying that most illegal immigrants obey the law and only want to work. "It's going to scare a lot of people," said Christian Lechuga, 23, who emigrated from Mexico eight years ago.
EMAIL LOU BARLETTA, Mayor, City of Hazleton, to express your support.
EMAIL cherie@hazletoncity.org
ping
Hey, Lou! Buona Sera, Paisan!
Mr. Mayor, Sir; this is the latest ploy used by the new world order crowd to make certain we become many nations in one. Of course this will mean the end of the good ole US of A. I am grateful to you, Mr. Mayor, for having seen through the darkness to understand one of the methods being utilized to defeat America. Thank you, Sir, for shining light on their attempts to destroy America, utilizing language, or the lack of a common language. I wish you and your city every success from beginning to end in dealing with the illegal problem.
As Geno's would say: "Per favore, parlare di Englese." LOL.
EMAIL LOU BARLETTA, Mayor, City of Hazleton, to express your support.
EMAIL cherie@hazletoncity.org
WORTH REPEATING --WE NEED MORE EMAILS LIKE THIS: Mr. Mayor, Sir; this is the latest ploy used by the new world order crowd to make certain we become many nations in one. Of course this will mean the end of the good ole US of A. I am grateful to you, Mr. Mayor, for having seen through the darkness to understand one of the methods being utilized to defeat America. Thank you, Sir, for shining light on their attempts to destroy America, utilizing language, or the lack of a common language. I wish you and your city every success from beginning to end in dealing with the illegal problem.
EMAIL LOU BARLETTA, Mayor, City of Hazleton, to express your support.
EMAIL cherie@hazletoncity.org
About time someone took on the feds and beat them at their own game!
Oh, I dunno---I'm thinking of Mayor Barletta as US Secy of State and Geno's Joe Vento as HomeLandSec czar.
ping
PA Ping
Big Southern California BUMP to a guy who gets it.
Well said.
The REAL problem here is the present Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration and the first Bush Administration and their friends and allies in Congress.
They have failed to protect the American people and to secure our borders and enforce the laws enacted by earlier congresses concerning illegals.
The force sent to our southern border is too little and too late.
We don't need a massive new law, we need to enforce the ones on the books. The Federal government should CUT OFF all Federal aid to any jurisdiction - city, state or County, which refuses to cooperate in apprending illegal invaders.
And Congress should enact an English as an Official Language Law, regardless of any expected veto by the President.
Great idea.
Over/under on how long it takes some Clinton or Carter-appointed activist federal judge to overturn the good mayor's initiatives, citing some 'penumbra' or 'emanation' of the 14th Amendment?
Amen.
"It's going to scare a lot of people," said an immigrant who illegally crossed our borders from Mexico eight years ago, and together with his 20 illegal relatives and 40 anchor babies, are living in a 2-bedroom apartment with several U-Haul storage vans parked out front, and destroying property values of hard-working Americans. These invaders are using forged documents, illegal driver's license, and several SS numbers to bilk US taxpayers and are scared stiff the freebie faucet will be turned off.
Now here's why they're "scared:"
The word is passed around the haciendas on how to belly-up to the public trough, to suckup the array of US govt freebies. The invaders are instructed to act like "victims in low paying jobs," but they know exactly how to suckup all the freebies.
The following briefly explains why illegals creep across the desert and perpetuate the lie about taking so-called "low-pay jobs Americans won't do," and cravenly use their children as a shield to coverup all manner of illegalities and to prevent deportation.
The US taxpayer is subsidizing aliens' every need 24/7, morn til night: Using multiple phony SS #'s, forged documents, and multiple IDs the invaders collect multiple $4500-$5400 EICs from the IRS by declaring several names/jobs - just by going $1 over the income limit. They also line up for EINs, ITINs, Child Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, welfare and food stamps.
US Taxpayers are subsidizing invaders' daily food intake, housing, reduced mortgages, free medical care, free education, reduced in-state tuition and out of state tuition. We also foot the legal bills when they start suing if we don't provide these goodies pronto......etc., etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.
The 850 pp monstrosity Senate bill (secretly written in El Presidente Vicente Fox's hacienda assisted by reconquista groups) provides that invaders will be paid a prevailing wage, Earned Income Tax credits, medical benefits; housing benefits; WIC; anchor baby citizenship; legal representation and amnesty from back taxes owed.
The Senate atrocity does not meet Constitutional muster b/c Vicente, and the reconquistas, could care less about the US Constitution. They want only to get their greedy hands on the US treasury and to take over the US government with the vote, or by violence, if necessary (their own words and signage at the recent protests).
All of this explains why aliens will do anything, pay anything, endure anything, to sneak over the border to get so-called "low-paying jobs" They have extortion dancing in their criminal heads......plans to rip-off US taxpayers every which way they can.
.....and billions of our tax dollars go back to Mexico where El Presidente Vicente gets a nice chunk of it---and so do the federales in Central and South American banana republics who help their compadres cross the border.
A possibility to be sure-----now we should be encouraged by the consensus this issue has struck among Americans----across the entire political spectrum.
Some 80-90% are anti-illegal.
Even the judges have heard the talk at parties and in the corridors of judicial power.
Freeper Activism ping.
IF THEY OBEYED THE LAW THEY WOULDN'T BE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE !!!
They recognize no legitimate authority, and survive by the law of the jungle.
The bring their banana republic predator tactics to America and are turning us into a Third World country.
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