Farmers Branch (Dallas suburb)Joins Anti-Illegal Immigrant Trend

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.

"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'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.

No, ESTUPIDO, what we ARE saying is, "Become citizens or get the hell out of here!"

Three new ordinances passed the City Council unanimously in last night's meeting. English will be the official language for all city publications, landlords must verify citizenship or legal status for everyone in a renting family, and police will be trained to check for immigrant status on persons jailed after arrests. A couple of other proposals, including penalties for employing illegals and restrictions on access to recreation programs, were not brought to votes.

The Latino opposition has promised lawsuits by the weekend, but ACLU appears to be backing off, saying they have to study the language of the ordinances before taking any action. It's clear that a great deal of study went into the language of the ordinances with a view to making them bulletproof. Most of this was accomplished by one man, councilman Tim O'Hare, who fought an uphill fight against apathy. He created a website and collected a large number of responses, including 100 or so applications from supporters wishing to speak before the council. The council's deliberations were done in executive session before the open meeting, based on Texas law that permits such action when legal counsel is needed. A Latino delegation gave them their advice, probably including the veiled warnings about lawsuits, before the doors closed. To my amazement there was no debate in the open meeting and the three ordinances flew through by unanimous vote.

There was a lot of heated discussion outside the council room during the meeting, but only one or two people actually got ejected by police.

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