Local anti-immigrant law shot down

A federal district judge ruled July 26 that the racist, anti-immigrant law passed earlier by the city of Hazelton, Pa., was unconstitutional and found in favor of 11 plaintiffs, including three undocumented immigrants, who had challenged the ordinance.

In the first trial decision of its kind, U.S. District Judge James Munley of Scranton, Pa., overturned the ordinance that sought to penalize businesses that hire and landlords who rent to undocumented immigrant workers.

Munley ruled that immigration policy is the purview of the federal government and that Hazelton’s actions preempted the federal laws and violated the plaintiffs’ due-process rights and those of others in the community.

The ordinance sought to impose hefty fines on landlords who rent to immigrants and deny business permits to companies that employ them. Another measure required potential tenants to register with City Hall and pay for a “rental permit.”

But this was no “local” law. Hazelton’s right-wing ordinance was the test case for the “legal” front of an organized national racist anti-immigrant backlash. It represents the tip of a dangerous iceberg targeting undocumented and documented immigrant workers.

Kris W. Kobach is a professor at the University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Law. Kobach, who has ties to right wing extremist organizations, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), served as the lawyer for Hazelton. At a panel discussion in Philadelphia last spring, Kobach advocated that “Every city should have the right to chose who can live there or not.”

Kobach was a White House Fellow in the personal office of Attorney General John Ashcroft during Bush’s first term. He was given a speaking role on the opening day of the 2004 Republican National Convention, where he called for U.S. troops to be sent to the Mexican border. He currently serves as the chair of the Kansas Republican Party.

Kobach, who has been criticized for accepting donations from people associated with white supremacists, is also serving as attorney for people challenging state policies that grant resident tuition rates to undocumented students in Kansas and California.

Immigrants scapegoated for economic decline

In reaction to the massive demonstrations in support of immigrant rights in 2006, Hazelton’s Mayor Lou Barletta pushed through the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” last July. Barletta claimed that immigrants “were the cause of rising crime and a declining economy” in this city of 30,000 located 80 miles north of Philadelphia.

Although most of Hazelton’s economic problems stem from the declining coal mining industry in the region, Barletta chose to scapegoat those least able to defend themselves. The ordinance threatened not only immigrants without papers, but thousands of documented Latin@ workers who make up 30 percent of the city’s population, drawn to the area because of Hazelton’s affordable housing and industrial parks.

Barletta received substantial financial support from anti-immigrant groups, and nearly a dozen other cities, including Riverside, N.J., have adopted similar laws. Munley’s ruling does not affect those measures.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit challenging the ordinance on behalf of Hazelton residents, landlords and business owners. Vic Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and a lead attorney in the case said: “The trial record showed that these ordinances are based on propaganda and deception. Hazelton-type laws are designed to make life miserable for millions of immigrants. They promote distrust of all foreigners, including those here legally, and fuel xenophobia and discrimination, especially against Latinos.”

While Hazelton officials made the claim that undocumented immigrants were responsible for “an increase in local crime,” evidence at the trial showed that over the last 30 years undocumented immigrants have had the lowest incarceration rate of young men of every ethnic group. A 2002 study showed that the rate of incarceration for native-born men was five times higher than that of foreign-born men.

Hazelton’s ordinance was never implemented because Manley issued a temporary order blocking its enforcement once the law was legally challenged. Kobach, however, has indicated that Hazelton will appeal, and higher courts have a reputation for being more reactionary.

This legal battle also takes place amid a climate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting undocumented workers around the country. The struggle to win policies that truly protect the rights of all workers, including those forced to cross borders for jobs, must continue.