Pa. town's illegal-immigrant law tossed
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... tion_N.htm
A federal judge threw out a Pennsylvania town's illegal-immigrant law Thursday in a decision likely to reverberate across the country.
Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act sought to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and suspend business licenses of companies that hire them. A companion measure would have required tenants to obtain rental permits.
U.S. District Judge James Munley ruled the measures unconstitutional. He said immigration policies are a federal, not local, responsibility and that the ordinances don't give employers, workers, landlords and tenants an adequate chance to defend themselves.
"The city could not enact an ordinance that violates rights the Constitution guarantees to every person in the United States, whether legal resident or not," Munley writes. "The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public."
Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta vowed to appeal. "Hazleton is not going to back down," he said in a written statement. "Neither the city of Hazleton nor I will stop fighting for all legal residents."
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Since Hazleton, a city of 22,000, approved its law a year ago, about 100 localities have proposed similar ordinances, says the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued Hazleton. Forty have been enacted.
The ruling doesn't address other communities' ordinances, but some immigration experts believe it sets a precedent they can't ignore.
"A lot of them are going to get struck down," says Kevin Johnson, associate dean at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, who specializes in immigration and civil rights law. "These ordinances, especially those very similar to the Hazleton ordinance, are at risk."
Margaret Thompson, a Clemson, S.C., councilwoman, says she won't let the ruling derail her plan to bar the city from doing business with companies that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.
"We need to fight this thing," she says. "We need to know who's in our country, and if it steps on toes, that's what it needs to do."
Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, agrees that communities shouldn't be prevented from taking action. He says FAIR, which promotes limits on immigration, will join Hazleton in its appeal.
"It is unreasonable for the courts to leave these local communities with no legal recourse to deal with the problems of illegal immigration," he says.