Thread: Immigration Feds' Job

Immigration Feds' Job
July 29, 2008

As long as Congress continues to shirk its responsibility to resolve the illegal immigration problem, the problem defaults to the nation's cities. It becomes the ultimate unfunded mandate. And ultimately it doesn't work.

Congress and city councils have different responsibilities, as should be obvious. It's up to Congress to say who can and cannot come into the country. City governments, on the other hand, have to take care of whoever is within their boundaries. Immigration status, which is a civil matter, is not a city's concern, except when a crime suspect is an illegal immigrant.

Hartford city Councilman Luis Cotto has proposed an ordinance that would prohibit the police from inquiring about a person's immigration status in most situations and would assure that services were available to all residents.

Mr. Cotto's proposal is well-meaning and noble, but it would unnecessarily hamstring police. They already operate under a policy put forth in March by Mayor Eddie A. Perez and Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts forbidding them from detaining or arresting any resident unless the individual is a criminal suspect or named in a federal criminal warrant.

As Mr. Cotto said, police should aggressively pursue any illegal suspected of committing a crime. Beyond that, the department has too much real work to be tracking down undocumented immigrants — most of whom are working and contributing to the city's economy.

Hartford, New Haven, New York and other cities across the country are resorting to such well-meaning but hand-tying measures because they feel they have no choice. They barely have the resources to pursue criminal violators. They are stuck with illegals because Congress cannot reasonably control the borders and let a reasonable number of immigrant workers into the country.

New Haven, for example, has refused to release names and addresses of residents who hold city ID cards — records that should be public under the state's open records laws. The state Freedom of Information Commission bought the city's argument that secrecy protects cardholders who are illegal immigrants from threats of harm and allowed this overly broad exemption — although the cards don't identify illegal immigrants as such and although this exemption will surely serve as a precedent for hiding other records.

Immigration expert Tamar Jacoby told a Hartford audience earlier this year that the demands of U.S. employers generate a flow of roughly 1.5 million immigrants a year, but quotas accommodate less than two-thirds of them. This leaves about a half-million illegal workers in the shadows. Most have jobs U.S. workers don't want.

Congress must, via a citizenship or guest worker program, allow enough people in to meet the labor demand legally. Until Congress accepts this responsibility, cities will have to take matters into their own hands.
http://www.courant.com:80/news/opinion/ ... 4344.story

Hartford, New Haven and New York? Is this something in the water they are drinking?