Thread: Escondido: Latino rights groups campaign against rental ban

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... sticNews-3

Calif. city may bar illegal immigrants from renting
Wed Oct 18, 2006 3:50 PM ET



By Tim Gaynor

ESCONDIDO, California (Reuters) - Local authorities in this California city are set to vote on a controversial measure on Wednesday to prohibit landlords from renting to illegal immigrants, a law opponents say is racist.

The city is the latest of several from California to Pennsylvania which have passed laws in recent months to deny access to housing or jobs to illegal immigrants in their communities.

Lawmakers in Escondido, which lies about 50 miles north of the Mexican border near San Diego, provisionally passed the measure by a 3-2 margin earlier this month following a heated debate that was interrupted by shouts and catcalls.

If approved on Wednesday it would come into effect in 30 days in the community of 140,000 residents, where more than a third of the population is Hispanic.

"The federal government has failed to act on illegal immigration, so we are having to deal with it directly ourselves," said Councilwoman Marie Waldron, who proposed the ordinance.

Police and sheriff's department officers turned out to keep the peace on the first vote two weeks ago, when boisterous supporters and opponents of the bill squared off outside city hall, although no arrests were made.

Opponents of the measure say it has divided residents along racial lines in the city, which is set in a corridor of prosperous commuter towns close to San Diego.

"It's a racist a document and it has set people in this community against one another," said Councilman Ron Newman, who opposed the ordinance along with the city's mayor, Lori Holt Pfeiler.

The ordinance would require landlords to hand over documentation on their tenants' immigration status to city authorities and evict illegal immigrant tenants or face penalties including suspension of their business licenses and fines.

If the measure is approved on Wednesday, as seems likely, the California city will join others including Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Riverside, New Jersey, which passed bylaws to curb illegal immigration in recent months.

The moves pitched the local communities into a hotly contested national debate about what to do with an estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Civil libertarians and pro-immigrant groups have contested the local laws, which they argue are discriminatory and usurp the federal government's jurisdiction on matters of immigration enforcement.

"Immigration is an issue for the federal government to address, not for local authorities," said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"The rash of ordinances are not only very harmful, but are also beyond the city governments' authority," she added.

Lieberman said the ACLU would be monitoring developments in Escondido, and did not rule out bringing a lawsuit.

Originally Posted by ELDEFENSOR

What's divisive is attempting to create an ordinance that is racial profiling; that is what is going to happen with an ordinance such as this. Any LATINO person who is predominately Spanish Speaking will probably have a hard time renting due to something like this. What is absurd most of all about this legislation, your organization and all you [Mod Edit=No personal attacks on this forum] is that you, as well as everyone else in our society benifits from the labor that both legal and illegal immigrants provide for our country and when economic times get a little tough you try and find a scapegoat as to why you are losing your jobs. Why wages are being depressed .

There is one word for this behavior [hypocracy.

Thanks for the reminder that illegal aliens are taking American jobs and depressing wages.