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Across America, in the nation’s smaller cities and towns, a growing number of local politicians are telling the federal government that if they don’t take strong steps to stop illegals from entering the country, they will. At this time over 50 cities and towns are debating immigration-related ordinances. Over 12 have already passed the laws and are taking action.
In Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the first local ban on employing or renting to illegal immigrants was passed on July 1, turning Mayor Louis Barletta into an instant hero in the anti-illegal-immigration movement. Despite the fact that the 2000 Census measured only 1,132 Hispanics in a town of 23,000, Barletta says that number has swelled to about 8,000.
In Taneytown, Maryland, the only official language is English. Pahrump, Nevada residents even went so far as to ban flying a foreign flag, unless a U.S. flag flies above it. But these new ordinances are meeting stiff resistance, and nearly every one of them is being challenged in the courts. In the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, where the City Council passed its own anti-illegal-immigrant ordinance last month, Latino and Christian activists announced they will file a lawsuit to stop the measure.“People are dreaming up these things with a sense of hopelessness that the government will not help them,” Michael Hethmon, an attorney with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told Kim Cobb and Susan Carroll, reporters for The Houston Chronicle. The Federation for American Immigration Reform is an organization that advocates for stricter immigration controls. “It shows the tremendous frustration with the federal government in even the most remote places,” Hethmon added.
Academics who study immigration trends and attitudes say the ordinances reflect a profound fear among many residents that American life is changing, particularly because of the huge increase of Hispanic immigrants. Animosity against the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has been growing for years. Immigrants have historically settled in half a dozen states, including Texas, California, Florida and New York. However, the foreign-born population doubled from 1990 to 2000 in much of the Midwest and Southeast. Legal critics say laws such as the one passed in Hazleton, Pennsylvania will not stand because enforcing immigration law is a job of the federal government. While the mayor says he expects it to go to the Supreme Court, he says the new law is already working. “We have witnessed people leaving Hazleton en masse — some in the middle of the night,” Barletta said. “We suspect many are illegals. Legal citizens would have no reason to leave in the dead of night.”
But the exodus of immigrants is not all good news. David Verduin, a 66-year-old landlord, says he has suffered since the Riverside Township passed a Hazleton-type ordinance in late July. Verduin estimates that 1,000 immigrants, mostly from Brazil and Mexico, left the Riverside Township (located in northern New Jersey near the Delaware River) shortly after the ordinance passed. The new law has turned some folks against one another, and mom-and-pop stores that have been open for generations have now closed. “It’s going from one town to the next – it’s the same law, word for word,” said Verduin, who joined a lawsuit to stop it from being enforced. ‘’I don’t recommend any town doing this. It’s bad publicity, and it costs a lot of money and it just dirties the name of the town.” Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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