Posted on 11/13/2006 7:10:07 AM PST by WestTexasWend
FARMERS BRANCH - This Dallas suburb could become the first city in Texas to adopt a sweeping ordinance intended to keep out illegal immigrants, a cause for concern among its large minority population.
More than 50 municipalities nationwide have considered, passed or rejected laws banning landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers and making English the local official language.
But until now, that trend hasn't been matched in the Lone Star State.
"This is the first town in Texas that had the guts to do what's right," Susie Hart, who grew up in Farmers Branch, said during a recent demonstration outside City Hall. "The education system is tanking, health care has gone through the roof, everybody is bilingual."
Such sentiments and the proposed ordinance trouble many people in Texas, where many Latino families can trace their roots here to the era before statehood. "This is not just a Farmers Branch problem," Elizabeth Villafranca said of the proposal.
Villafranca, whose family owns a Mexican restaurant in Farmers Branch, said she worries that such laws will spread to other cities if the city council approves the proposal. The measure is expected to be submitted to the council on Monday, but there was no indication when it might be put to a vote.
Since 1970, Farmers Branch has changed from a small, predominantly white bedroom community with a declining population to a city of almost 28,000 people, about 37 percent of them Hispanic, according to the census.
It also is home to more than 80 corporate headquarters and more than 2,600 small and mid-size firms, many of them minority-owned.
The local debate over illegal immigration began in August and spawned demonstrations by both sides of the issue. Council members adopted a resolution criticizing the federal government for not aggressively addressing the issue.
A councilman has given city attorneys drafts of an ordinance that would make English the city's official language and proposals to fine companies and landlords who do business with illegal immigrants.
The Farmer's Branch proposal follows a vote this year in Hazleton, Pa., to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, deny business permits to companies that employ them and require tenants to register and pay for a rental permit. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the Hazleton ordinance while he considers a lawsuit against the town by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
More than a dozen other Pennsylvania cities have taken up similar ordinances, as have several others in the South and a handful in California.
Many of the towns and counties have based their ordinances on a model provided by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which favors limits on immigration and is affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
"They've all expressed a great deal of frustration with the failure of the federal government to respond" to illegal immigration, said Mike Hethmon, the institute's general counsel.
Critics fear the spread of anti-illegal immigration rules will lead to sanctioned discrimination and racism.
"It's basically saying those people are illegal in their very nature; it is all right to be against them because they are lawbreakers. Many people are assuming that all immigrants are lawbreakers, and that people who are different, who speak a different language, are to be shunned," said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Hopefully, Sugar Land will do this as well.
The crowning touch would be if the movement moves into New Mexico!!!!
ping
All this is OK with our President, he wants America to be Amexico, and the gutless wonders from both parties who have followed his lead think it's OK too.
For anyone who still thinks GWB is a "conservative", I have some swampland for sale.
Get those doggies rollin'..Move 'em up! Head 'em out! RAWHIDE!!!
Bttt!
I'm anxious to hear how things went tonight. Please ping me to wherever you'll be posting your report. Please don't push 1 to hear my "Thank you" in English.
Just another term for "suburb".
Hundreds, maybe thousands of small towns taking action and the ACLU forced into bankruptcy trying to stop them all in court.
Yo, ACLU, sue this!
LOL!
Farmers Branch passed it 6-0.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061114/D8LCK8100.html
L
pingage
It passed >>>
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738112/posts
This won't be much of a problem. The larger cities in the metroplex will bring FB back into line with nary a wimper.
My alarm went off to Ankarlo talking about this news, and it made me wonder if I was actually awake. I still cannot believe it. Believe me, I am thrilled there is still common sense in the world, but I grow cynical with each year.
And on a side note, Ankarlo is going to have his work cut out for him in Phoenix.
My hat's off to everyone associated with this vote in Farmer's Branch!!
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