Altoona, With No Immigrant Problem, Decides to Solve It

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/us/07altoona.html

By SEAN D. HAMILL
Published: December 7, 2006

ALTOONA, Pa., Nov. 30 — By now the pattern is familiar. New businesses move to town, creating low-paying, low-skill jobs that are quickly filled by immigrants. Most are Hispanics who speak little English. Some may be in the country illegally. After a few years, local leaders fume that school enrollment has surged, social services are stretched and crime has increased, and they blame the illegal immigrants.

Since June, when Hazleton, Pa., some 130 miles east of here, began debating what to do about illegal immigrants, more than 60 local governments in 21 states have followed its lead and considered new ordinances to drive them away. At least 15 have approved the measures, typically intended to punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and business owners who employ them.

Altoona, an old railroad town nestled in an Appalachian Mountain valley about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, is one of those 15. It approved its ordinance in October. But it does not fit the same pattern.

“If you were to look for the area for the fewest immigrant settlements in the country, you would look to south central Pennsylvania,” said Steven A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization in Washington that favors tougher immigration policies. “There just aren’t many immigrants — legal or illegal — around Altoona because there aren’t many jobs.”

If Hazleton, where the immigrant population grew sharply in just a few years, started the current trend for dealing with a surge in illegal immigrants, Altoona may be the beginning of the next wave: trying to prevent a situation from developing in the first place.

“We don’t have a problem here with immigrants,” said Joe Rieker, 40, one of five members of the Altoona City Council who voted in favor of the new ordinance. “But we want to stay ahead of the curve.”

When places like Altoona pass such laws, it is a sign of a growing frustration with the federal government’s lack of immigration enforcement, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The group’s legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, has aided several towns, including Altoona, in writing similar laws.

“We certainly hope we see more towns like Altoona” approving ordinances restricting illegal immigrants, Mr. Mehlman said. “And as the message gets out that there aren’t a lot of communities that are welcoming, it will be a deterrent.”

But the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, Vic Walczak, worries that a different message is being sent.

“When you have towns like Altoona enacting a solution in search of a problem, you worry if there’s a nativist impulse there,” Mr. Walczak said. “There’s a fair bit of politics involved here, and illegal immigrants are an easy and effective scapegoat for a small town’s problems.”

Founded in 1849 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Altoona grew as waves of German, Irish and Italian immigrants moved here. But immigrants have long since bypassed Altoona as the city’s economic fortunes dwindled along with those of the railroad business. In the 2000 census, the city had just 295 foreign-born residents, about one-half of 1 percent of its 49,523 residents, and no one thinks that figure has changed much over the past six years.

“You see a car here with four Mexicans in it, I do feel bad about it, but they do stand out in an area that’s mostly white and of European descent,” said Mr. Rieker, whose wife, Vanessa, is a Peruvian immigrant going through the lengthy and complex process of becoming a United States citizen.

But Altoona does have at least one factor in common with Hazleton: both ordinances were passed after local killings that have been attributed to illegal immigrants.

In Hazleton, a local man was shot and killed in May. Two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic have been charged in his death.

In Altoona, Miguel Padilla, 27, was convicted in September in the killings of three men outside a nightclub on Aug. 28, 2005. Though he had moved to a nearby town as a boy and graduated from a local high school, Mr. Padilla was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He had previously been arrested and his illegal status had been reported to the federal government.

Mayor Wayne Hippo and other members of the Council have said the Padilla case had nothing to do with the city’s ordinance, which threatens to withdraw the business licenses of employers and rental licenses of landlords who hire or rent to illegal immigrants.

But for local residents who support the ordinance, the murders were the biggest reason Altoona needed the ordinance.

“We just had three murders here,” Sandy Serbello, 64, a lifelong resident said in explaining her support of the measure. “We look at everybody differently now.”

Ms. Serbello said she avoided talking to anyone she suspected of being an illegal immigrant, “because we don’t want to be one of their victims.”

That is the kind of sentiment that worries the Rev. Luke Robertson, executive director of Catholic Charities in Altoona, which along with the local Roman Catholic diocese strongly opposed the ordinance.

“I don’t think they thought through the unintended consequences,” said Father Robertson, 49, a Franciscan priest. “It promotes bigotry.”

Moreover, said Bishop Joseph V. Adamec of the diocese, the ordinance could discourage businesses from opening in or relocating to Altoona when Interstate 99, which runs through town, is completed, connecting Interstates 80 and 76.

“They’re not going to build here if we aren’t welcoming,” said Bishop Adamec, who has overseen the diocese for 19 years.

He is not swayed by those who say that the three murders might have been prevented if the ordinance had been in effect in 2005.

“The one who did it, he came here when he was a boy and went to our schools,” Bishop Adamec said. “He didn’t come here already formed. He’s one of us.”