Small town immigration enforcement

Houston Chronicle:

In small towns and sleepy suburbs across America, growing numbers of local politicians are sending a message to the federal government: If you won't solve the illegal immigration problem, we will.

The trend started this summer in a small Pennsylvania town and swept across middle America, with at least 50 local governments considering immigration-related ordinances and roughly a dozen taking action. But nearly every local law aimed at barring illegal immigrants from working or renting homes has been stalled by a legal challenge.

In the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, where the City Council passed its own anti-illegal-immigrant ordinance Monday, Latino and Christian activists already are planning to sue.

Fueled by collective frustration and the ease of information-sharing on the Internet, the home-grown political movement has jumped from the Eastern seaboard to the California coast. The ''raging fire of ordinances" has the potential to profoundly change immigration law, said Mazaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University.

In Hazleton, Pa., the city wants to fine landlords and employers who do business with undocumented immigrants. In Taneytown, Md., the only official language is English.

Pahrump, Nev., even went so far as to ban flying a foreign flag, unless a U.S. flag flies above it.

''People are dreaming up these things with a sense of hopelessness that the government will help them," said Michael Hethmon, an attorney with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that advocates for stricter immigration controls.

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Animosity against the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has been growing for years.

Though immigrants historically have settled in a half-dozen states, including Texas, California, Florida and New York, the foreign-born population doubled from 1990 to 2000 in much of the Midwest and Southeast.

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The Hazleton ordinance has been copied in about 50 towns so far. It appears to be based on deep frustration with the federal governments failure to enforce immigration laws. I think it is also a backlash against the sanctuary movement by many communities who are hostile to the rule of law when it comes to immigration. Cities who will not let police inquire about immigration status generally fall into the sanctuary category.