http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local ... 34212.html

Carpentersville, IL Focus Campaign
http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... c&p=223923

Sep 29, 2006 10:36 pm US/Central

Immigrants Driven Out Of Town Over Ordinance
Illegal Alien Act Would Prohibit Businesses and Landlords From Doing Business With Them.

Katie McCall
Reporting

(CBS) Carpentersville, Ill. Friday evening, Carpentersville is a community divided over undocumented immigrants.

People in the Northwest suburban village are at odds over an ordinance that some claim would drive illegal immigrants out of town. Walk down any street in Carpentersville's East Side and you see evidence that the village's large Latino population is thriving.

But two civil rights groups say a proposed ordinance here is targeting immigrants.

"My initial reaction is just feeling really insulted," said Fred Tsao, policy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

That's Tsao's reaction to the ordinance called the: "Illegal Alien Immigration Relief Act ."

It prohibits conducting business with/or renting to "illegal aliens." Violators face losing their business license and landlords would be fined $1,000. It also makes English the official language of the village.

But it's the language in the ordinance that has civil rights groups concerned.

The ordinance states: "illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates, contributes to overcrowded housing, and failing schools, subjects our village to fiscal hardship….and diminishes our overall quality of life."

"This ordinance is based on really caricatured stereotypes of immigrants," said Ricardo Meza of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund .

He says he is outraged.

"It's offensive because the findings are not based on anything," he said.

Meza wrote a letter to the village and he plans to pack next week's village meeting with citizens who feel the same way and says three identical ordinances in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey have all been challenged in court because he says they are unenforceable.

"These types of laws are bad public policy and create divisiveness in the community," he added.

But Trustee Paul Hupfer who drafted the ordinance says the laws addresses a real problem.

"It is impacting us as a village, not only from a cost perspective, but also from a crime perspective," he said.