Local US ban on hiring, housing illegal migrants struck down

AFP
9/9/10

A Philadelphia federal appeals court on Thursday struck down a law that sought to punish landlords and employers of illegal immigrants.

The court said the ordinance passed by the small Pennsylvania town of Hazleton violated federal prerogatives on immigration issues.

Civil rights groups, which challenged the ordinance almost immediately after Hazleton passed it in 2006, welcomed the ruling.

The decision comes ahead of a challenge to a similar law in Arizona, which the Supreme Court will hear in December.

Thursday's ruling found that the Hazleton ordinance effectively infringed upon policy areas that belong to the federal government.

"It appears plain that the purpose of these housing provisions is to ensure that aliens lacking legal immigration status reside somewhere other than Hazleton," the court wrote.

"It is this power to effectively prohibit residency based on immigration status that is so clearly within the exclusive domain of the federal government."

The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the decision, saying it sent a strong message.

"The case, Lozano v. Hazleton, has been closely watched across the country because the Hazleton ordinance has served as a model for similar laws nationwide and was challenged by civil rights groups in a lengthy trial," the group said in a statement.

"This is a major defeat for the misguided, divisive and expensive anti-immigrant strategy that Hazleton has tried to export to the rest of the country," said Omar Jadwat, a staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

The Hazleton ordinance was passed after an influx of Hispanic immigrants into the small town, home to some 30,000 people, in the early part of the decade.

The ordinance sought to prevent "the threat of crime," and to ensure city residents would not be "burdened by the cost of providing goods, support and services to aliens unlawfully present in the United States," it said.

It also aimed to ensure legal residents were "free of the debilitating effects on their economic and social well being imposed by the influx of illegal aliens."

There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, most of them from Latin America.

Attempts in recent years to draft legislation that would grant amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants have been stymied by fierce opposition, particularly from Republican lawmakers.

Comment:

There you have it again folks! The Federal government sues local governments because the locals are enforcing immigration laws. The locals only do this because the Feds refuse to enforce their own laws. If the government won't enforce the law, then we have to do it ourselves. Vigilantism? If wanting to protect yourself from unwanted and unwelcome foreign invaders is vigilantism, then call me a vigilante.