http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=6383757

City Considers Using Liquor Licenses to Fight Illegal Immigration

April 17, 2007 07:20 PM

By Chris Duffy and Adam Aaro

Green Bay's city council is set to decide whether the city will exercise its licensing authority to fight illegal immigration.

City Council President Chad Fradette wants every business applying for or transferring its city liquor license to agree not to hire illegal immigrants. Fradette first brought up the idea at last week's Protection and Welfare Committee meeting.

"If Green Bay takes a stance, maybe it will spread, and maybe it will say to the federal government, you really have to work on your issues and you have to enforce the laws you have in place," Fradette said.

Three businesses currently applying to renew their liquor licenses would get them only after promising in writing not to knowingly hire illegal workers.

"If we can discourage them from coming over here to Green Bay because there aren't any jobs, they won't come here and we'll have less problems," Fradette said.

Multicultural activists say they think it's unfair because undocumented workers aren't causing problems in the community.

"Here in Green Bay, I've been reading the paper, I read the news and yet I haven't heard immigrants are creating this problem here in Green Bay," Chico Ramirez said.

Ramirez is director of the Green Bay Multicultural Center. "It's going to alienate people. It's a divisive issue. It's going to make people angry. It's going to make them suspicious, distrustful," he said.

Right now the proposal only affects these three businesses in a pilot project. Fradette hopes this is the beginning of a large-scale, city-wide fight against illegal immigration; he'd like to see the proposal go beyond liquor licenses and cover all city licenses, including those already in place.

"The federal government is not dealing with the issue of illegal immigration -- unless illegal aliens commit a serious crime, then they deal with it, but other than that they don't even look at it," Fradette charged.

Ramirez says although some workers are undocumented, they do a great amount of good for the community like establishing businesses and helping in the workforce.

He said, "We're sending a lot of these negative messages out to all over the United States, and we've shot ourselves in the foot several times."

The city council will vote whether to add this stipulation to the three liquor licenses when it meets Tuesday night. We'll let you know what city alders think about the idea, on Action 2 News at Ten.