Posted on 06/20/2006 2:49:21 PM PDT by peggybac
HAZLETON, Pa. - 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.
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On the Net:
Hazleton: http://www.hazletoncity.org
I just now saw him as well. More and more local communities need to be doing this. Doing the jobs that feds just won't do.
Very good point. Jane Skinner actually asked him why he was doing this; why wasn't he leaving it up to Congress, etc. Was she kidding?
Oh this is silly. Everyone knows this is a border issue...
I note that over the last decade, the nation has been forced to admit Californians and other border state residents who were complaining about the impact of illegal aliens, weren't the xenophobes the scatterbrains have said they were.
If we legalize those who are here, this will get four times worse within twenty years. Anyone think that is a good idea besides the Presdient and Vincinte Fox.
"Anyone think that is a good idea besides the Presdient and Vincinte Fox."
Sure, every business whose short term profits will be juiced by lower wage costs.
They will never stop until wage level across the borders are equalized. The National Chamber of Commerce has evolved from a "protectionist" lobby into a globalist one.
I agree.
LA's mayor has lots of illegal ties too....stabbed a dude too
Good for them ... nice town
Here's one from NPR about the Sheriff in Butler Co, Ohio who actually has the nerve to enforce the law. It's so pathetic the whining for the invaders.
It's like they want it both ways whenever it suits their propaganda purposes. When the illegals are in our faces on the streets with foreign flags telling us they're going nowhere according to the media Congress better cave or else.
Yet when law enforcement actually does something illegals according to the media are these poor helpless victims hiding under their beds afraid to walk the streets, living in the shadows. Which is it?
At the risk of violating protocol around here, Ill post a comment I made in another related thread.
I had the privilege of talking to Mayor Barletta before the Thursday evening council vote. Barletta is a courageous man and I am incredibly flattered and encouraged by his decision to replicate our initiative effort in his city.
I believe that we are going to reshape this immigration debate by attacking it at the local level and thereby, consequently elevating itself into the debate this political season and forcing our electeds and prospective electeds to deal with this subject once and for all.
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