USA (By
Miriam Jordan, The Wall Street Journal) July 16, 2006 — As immigration
legislation stalls in a divided Congress, states and towns across the nation are
taking matters into their own hands, pursuing a range of measures aimed at
cracking down on migrants.
Driven in
part by election-year pressures, politicians from Massachusetts to California
are drawing up laws and ordinances to limit migrants' access to jobs, housing
and government services. The officials argue migrants are
overburdening local schools and hospitals and straining public finances.
This year,
more than 500 pieces of immigration-related legislation have been introduced in
state legislatures, and 57 of them have been enacted in 27 states, according to
the National Conference of State Legislatures. In April, Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue, a Republican, signed into law a bill that will restrict public benefits
and certain employment rights for migrants, starting next year. On Monday,
Colorado legislators passed similar measures.
Last month,
several Pennsylvania legislators introduced a package of bills that would, among
other things, prohibit public spending on services or benefits for migrants.
Several Pennsylvania towns are considering local sanctions against landlords
that rent to or businesses that employ such migrants.
In Idaho,
home to an estimated 20,000 migrants – many employed in meatpacking and
construction – Canyon County filed a racketeering lawsuit last year against
agribusiness companies and other employers accused of hiring them. The suit
sought to recover money the county said it spent on services for the migrants.
After a federal judge threw out the case, county commissioners voted earlier
this year to appeal the ruling.
Even towns
with relatively few migrants are drafting pre-emptive measures. Officials in
Sandwich, Mass., a Cape Cod community of 24,000, where migrants account for just
3% of the population, endorsed a motion this week to declare the town "not a
sanctuary for illegal aliens" and to impose a $1,000 fine on businesses for each
undocumented immigrant they hire.
The
grass-roots initiatives, which cut across party lines, come amid a standoff
between the House and Senate over differing versions of an immigration bill. The
House version calls for beefing up border enforcement and denying amnesty to
migrants already in the U.S.; the Senate version would put millions of migrants
on the path to citizenship. A compromise is considered unlikely this year.
Some of the
state and local initiatives may run afoul of federal law and face legal
challenges from immigrant-advocacy groups. "These local measures are couched as
rental or trespassing laws," says Maria Blanco, an attorney at the Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco. "The bottom line is their
motivation is to control immigration, and that is within federal purview."
As more
migrants journey beyond traditional gateways like the Southwest and California
to settle in states like Massachusetts and Georgia, local initiatives to crack
down on them are springing up in small towns and suburbs thousands of miles from
the U.S.-Mexico border. In many of those areas, the local impact of the influx
is more noticeable than in the urban centers or agricultural regions where
illegal immigration has long been a fact of life.
In the
northeastern Pennsylvania town of Hazleton, population 31,000, Mayor Louis
Barletta introduced a proposal last month that calls for revoking permits
granted to businesses that employ migrants, imposing fines on landlords who rent
to them and making English the city's official language. The city council has
given preliminary approval to the initiative, and it is expected to pass this
week.
"We should be
using tax dollars on legal taxpayers, not on illegal aliens," says Mr. Barletta,
a Republican, who has eliminated a $1.2 million deficit he inherited on taking
office in 2000.
Mr. Barletta,
who says he doesn't know how many of his town's fast-growing Hispanic community
might be migrants, says the last straw for him was the murder of a 29-year-old
Hazleton resident in May. The four suspects in custody are migrants, he says.
"Our police department worked 36 hours to apprehend these individuals. We had
hundreds of hours of overtime," he adds.
Measures
Spreading
Inspired by
Hazleton, other nearby towns are considering similar measures. In recent years,
those towns, built by Polish, Irish and Italian migrants, have seen an influx of
Mexicans, Dominicans and other Latin Americans.
At the state
level, the Pennsylvania Legislature plans to hold hearings later this summer on
a package of bills dubbed "National Security Begins at Home." In addition to
barring state spending on health care, education and other services for
migrants, the legislation would allow law-enforcement spending on migrants to be
billed to the immigrant's country of origin.
"The federal
government is refusing to take responsibility, so we have to protect our state
borders," says state Rep. Tom Yewcic, a Democrat and supporter of the package.
Until
recently, the issue of illegal immigration has popped up only sporadically at
the state level, with the most famous case being California's proposition 187 to
deny services to migrants. It was passed in 2094 and ruled unconstitutional four
years later. But the latest initiatives signal that the immigration debate has
taken on a new fervor and divisiveness.
The measures
appeal to residents who feel migrants are overtaxing local schools and other
public services and taking unfair advantage of legitimate taxpayers. "There are
flashpoints that feed into the average person's fears," says Michael Manning, a
priest in San Bernardino, Calif., about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, where a
petition that would ban renting houses to migrants and punish their employers
led to a city council showdown.
Efforts to
get the measure on the local ballot consumed the cash-strapped town for months.
Late last month, a judge ruled that the local anti-illegal-immigration group
that sponsored the initiative hadn't collected enough signatures to hold a city
vote.
Save Our
State founder Joseph Turner, who mounted the petition drive, said that he
wouldn't make another attempt to introduce the measure. He says his mission had
succeeded in spurring other towns to draft policies against migrants.
Indeed, Mr.
Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., says his own proposal was inspired by the
San Bernardino initiative. "I took language from [San Bernardino] and modified
it for our situation," he says.
Hazleton's
measure, in turn, inspired the mayor of Avon Park, Fla., a small town in the
state's citrus region, to draft a similar ordinance, which is expected to be
adopted later this month.
In
Massachusetts, Brazilian migrants, many of them illegal, are changing the face
of many towns. The immigration debate has taken center stage in the
gubernatorial race, with Gov. Mitt Romney proposing that state troopers enforce
immigration law. Legislators also proposed a hotline for callers to report
employers of suspected migrants.
Strategy
of the Day
"It's the
political strategy of the day to beat up and scapegoat migrants," said Ali
Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy
Coalition. "You have politicians of all stripes capitalizing on the fear."
Some of the
measures are already facing tough court challenges. In Arizona, a state in the
vanguard of anti-illegal-immigration legislation, several groups are seeking to
overturn provisions of Proposition 200, a law passed in 2004 that denies some
government benefits to migrants and requires people to show identification
before casting a vote.
Last month,
the Colorado Supreme Court, on technical grounds, disqualified a petition for a
November ballot initiative that would have asked the state's voters to bar
migrants from receiving state services. Undeterred, the state's Republican
governor, Bill Owens, called a special legislative session to tackle illegal
immigration.
Late Monday,
Colorado lawmakers ended the five-day special session by passing legislation
that would deny most state benefits to migrants 18 years or older, and require
those applying for or renewing benefits to prove legal residency.
Many Colorado
Democrats who supported the bills described them as the toughest in the nation,
but Republicans said they didn't go far enough. Sen. Dan Grossman, one of four
Democrats who voted against the package, said: "I don't think the poor people of
the state of Colorado or businesses of the state of Colorado should have to pay
because we want to play politics with immigration."
