Thread: Another fine American stands up to help out

Immigration law fuels action
Friday, September 22, 2006

By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff



Riverside's anti-illegal immigration ordinance has sparked strong feelings, pro and con, and not just in Riverside.

An Edgewater Park businesswoman, Carole Moore, is conducting a yard sale outside her bed and breakfast Saturday to help Riverside defray any legal costs it incurs defending the Illegal Immigration Relief Act ordinance.
And on the other side of the debate, one national organization has sued the township over the ordinance and another group is threatening to do so.

The ordinance, enacted in July, makes it illegal for landlords or employers to assist illegal immigrants.

Riverside Mayor Charles Hilton estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in Riverside before the ordinance's passage at between 1,500 and 3,500.

In Edgewater Park, Moore said she already has thousands of items ready for Saturday's yard sale, donated by people who, like her, want to join the fight against illegal immigrants.

"We are a melting pot of legal immigrants," Moore said this week. "Illegals should go home."

But to the Rev. Miguel Rivera, head of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, the Riverside ordinance has succeeded only in "dividing the community, hurting local businesses and increasing discrimination" against Latinos and others, many of them here legally.

Rivera's group, based in Washington, D.C., has filed a federal lawsuit against the township, charging violations of the U.S. Constitution based primarily on the idea that immigration policy is a federal, not local responsibility, and that local agencies may not pre-empt federal authority.

With that suit now before a federal judge in Newark, a second lawsuit has been threatened by a coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In a letter to Hilton, the coalition gave notice that it intends to sue based on grounds similar to those in the clergy's suit if the township does not withdraw its ordinance at its next meeting.

Such a withdrawal is "not likely," Hilton said in response.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/p ... 20374/1006

God bless this lady and all who donated items.

I hope her yard sale is a sellout.