Civil rights campaigners sued the Pennsylvania town of Hazleton on Tuesday, seeking to block one of America's toughest local laws against illegal immigrants.
The suit says Hazelton's City Council violated the U.S. constitution when it passed a law denying business permits to companies that hire illegal aliens and fining landlords who rent homes to them.
The measure, which also establishes English as the town's official language, has made Hazleton a focus of the national debate on immigration. The plaintiffs say their suit is the first in the country to challenge a local immigration ordinance.
The suit was filed in federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by groups including the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union. They accuse Hazleton of overstepping its authority on the federal matter of immigration and say the law discriminates against immigrants.
"This mean-spirited law is wrong for many reasons but the most obvious is that the city does not have the power to make its own immigration laws," Omar Jadwat, an attorney for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement.
Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, a proponent of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance, says illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America has increased crime, overburdened schools and hospitals, and eroded the quality of life in the town of some 31,000 people.
Barletta predicted the law would survive a court challenge and said he would take it to the Supreme Court if necessary. "We're not going to be bullied," he said in a statement.
About a third of the Hazelton's residents are Hispanic, up from around 5 percent in 2000, officials say.
At the federal level, the House and Senate are trying to reconcile starkly different immigration bills that call for tougher border controls and provide routes to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
Posted by: SOT
They are called ILLEGAL's for a reason. Where else in this world would you find so many condoning illegal activity.
Posted by: USMCTrooper
Posted on Thu, Aug. 17, 2006
Immigration law forces families to flee St. Louis suburb
Associated Press
VALLEY PARK, Mo. - A new law in the St. Louis suburb Valley Park has forced more than 20 families to leave the town, and the Archdiocese of St. Louis is helping them relocate.
An ordinance passed July 17 fines landlords $500 per violation for knowingly renting to illegal immigrants. Many of the families that have left were staying at Cheryl Lane Apartments. Some left so quickly they didn't take their furniture, apartment owner James Zhang told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Zhang and his apartment manager went door-to-door last week, telling residents that if they weren't in the country legally, they needed to move out. Of his 48 units, 20 are now empty, said Zhang, noting that the fine is more than the $450 he charges for monthly rent.
The archdiocese's Hispanic Ministry has helped families move and find new places and has even provided rent money, said Hector Molina, the ministry's director. Most families have mixed citizenship status, he said, meaning some members are in the country legally while others are not.
"For local governments to jump the gun, to do something like this, is dangerous," Molina said. "It's reckless."
The Catholic Church opposes illegal immigration, Molina said, but he called Valley Park's law inhumane.
"We are talking about what the Gospel compels us to do," he said.
The new law claims that illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates and overcrowded classrooms, destroys neighborhoods and diminishes the quality of life. In addition to fines for landlords, the ordinance imposes penalties on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
The city has not seen widespread problems with illegal immigration, but passed the law as a "preventive measure," Mayor Jeffery Whitteaker has said.
Valley Park is one of a handful of cities across the country that have passed similar laws.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund sued the city of Hazleton, Pa., on Tuesday over its ordinance, claiming city lacks the authority to regulate immigration and that the law violates immigrants' civil rights.
Of the cities that have passed the ordinances, Valley Park is among the first to begin enforcing it, said Anthony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.
Whitteaker said he has received hundreds of calls and e-mails from across the nation, nearly all of them expressing support.
"It really gives you a warm feeling to know the whole country is behind you," he said.
Whitteaker said he was glad to hear illegal immigrants were leaving the city. But landlords say they do not have the expertise to verify documents establishing legal residency and that they risk being sued for discrimination if they ask too many questions.
U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican whose district includes Valley Park, said he understands why cities feel frustrated by the federal government's inaction on immigration. He has criticized President Bush's proposal for a guest worker program.
Akin has not reviewed the Valley Park ordinance but said, "It seems to me that they have the jurisdiction to do that. I can see some logic to why they did it."
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