Pennsylvania town creates consequences for businesses that hire illegals

AP/Houston Chronicle:

With tensions rising and the police department and municipal budget stretched thin, Hazleton is about to embark on one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Last week, the mayor of this former coal town 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 lease to illegal immigrants; and make English the official language of the city.

"Illegal immigrants are destroying the city," said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. "I don't want them here, period."

Barletta said he had no choice but to act after two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic were charged last month with shooting and killing a 29-year-old man. Other recent incidents involving illegal immigrants have rattled this city 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, including the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for firing a gun at a playground.

"This is crazy," the mayor said. "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."

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When Barletta took office in 2000, Hispanics represented about 5 percent of the city's population of 23,000. The population has since shot up to 31,000, with Hispanics now representing 30 percent, lured to Hazleton by cheap housing, a lower cost of living and jobs in nearby plants, factories and farms.

City officials do not 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.

Municipal officials around the nation, frustrated at what they perceive as the federal government's inability to stem illegal immigration, have increasingly taken matters into their own hands:

•San Bernardino, Calif., voters will decide whether to adopt a measure nearly identical to the one in Hazleton.
•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. "This is a fine example of what I'm talking about."

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This is why there is so much passion on the border enforcement side of the immigration issue and why it is not limited to the border states.