Thread: Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta Addresses FAIR’s Annual Meeting

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta Addresses FAIR’s Annual Meeting

"I Didn't Have a Choice," Says Mayor


As a young man, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Mayor Lou Barletta dreamed of making a name for himself as a professional baseball player. A few seasons in the Cincinnati Reds farm system revealed serious impediment to realizing that dream — he couldn’t hit a curve ball — leading team officials to suggest that he find another line of work.

Returning to his hometown of Hazleton, Barletta and his wife, Mary Grace, built a successful business and raised four daughters. A love for his community led him into local government, first as a member of the city council and more recently as mayor. That is where Mayor Barletta begins his story about the circumstances that led him to become America’s best known small city mayor.

When Barletta became mayor of this city of about 30,000 people 80 miles from Philadelphia, Hazleton was a town in decline. Businesses were leaving town, city hall was plagued by corruption and the city was struggling to hold on to its residents. In a few short years, Barletta had turned Hazleton around and it was once again a thriving small city. That is, until the city began to experience an influx of illegal aliens about five years ago.

Suddenly, in a small town where people sent their kids to play in the parks and sat on the front porch with their neighbors, everything changed as a result of illegal immigration. Violent crime skyrocketed, houses shared by as many as 20 people popped up in the middle of family neighborhoods, and schools and emergency rooms were suddenly overcrowded.

After a long road back, “We were losing our city,” Barletta told attendees at FAIR’s annual Board of Directors and Board of Advisors dinner on September 30. Unlike a lot of other local officials who have refused to confront illegal immigration in their communities head-on, claiming that it is a “federal matter,” Barletta acted to begin “taking our city back, because I didn’t have any choice.” Responsibility for controlling the nation’s borders may rest with Washington, but making sure that kids could play in local parks, or that senior citizens could sit on their porches on a summer evening was his responsibility as mayor of Hazleton, and he was not about to shirk it.

After a particularly gruesome murder in Hazleton earlier this year, perpetrated by an illegal alien, Barletta decided enough was enough. With the support of the city council, he crafted a series of local ordinances designed to send a clear message that illegal aliens are not welcome in Hazleton. The local ordinances put business owners and landlords on notice that hiring or renting to illegal aliens would result in penalties imposed by the city and even to the loss of business licenses.

With the assistance of FAIR and the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the city refined the ordinances in September to withstand the inevitable legal challenges from the pro-illegal alien advocacy network and the ACLU. Barletta’s appearance at FAIR’s annual meeting was a way of showing his appreciation for the support that the organization has provided him and Hazleton as they seek a response to their illegal immigration problem.

A remarkable thing has happened in the relatively short time since he set out to take back the city, Barletta told the FAIR audience. Almost immediately, sometimes in the middle of the night, U-Haul trucks backed up to the houses filled with illegal aliens and rolled out of town. The Hazleton ‘reverse migration’ phenomenon is precisely what FAIR and other advocates for immigration enforcement have predicted would happen: illegal aliens began leaving on their own, almost immediately.

What is happening in Hazleton is a refutation of the assertions made by advocates for amnesty, that we cannot deport millions of illegal aliens so we have no choice but to give them amnesty. Hazleton’s experience demonstrates that there is a clear alternative. Faced with a nationally enforced policy that makes it clear to illegal aliens that jobs, public services and even apartments will not be easily accessible to people who violate our immigration laws, many — perhaps even most — illegal aliens would decide to deport themselves.

While the federal government still isn’t getting the message, apparently cities and towns all across America are. Standing in front of visual displays of newspaper headlines and appreciative letters from frustrated Americans all across the country, Barletta reports that he spends part of almost every day speaking to other local government leaders who seek his advice on replicating the Hazleton model in their communities.

Barletta may not have achieved stardom on the baseball diamond, but his strong and principled stand against an illegal immigration crisis that threatened to destroy his city has propelled him to national stardom. As Barletta addressed FAIR board members and activists in a Washington hotel ballroom, a crew from CBS’s 60 Minutes was filming his speech as part of a report they are doing about him and other courageous local leaders who are confronting a problem that has reached into every corner of America.