Costs high when fighting immigrants

With Congress failing to develop a plan to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, many New Jersey municipalities have come up with their own laws to address the problem.

But the crackdown has failed in many places as towns realize they can't afford to fight court challenges and political opposition.

In the late 1990s the Borough of Bound Brook agreed to pay victims $425,000, hire a bilingual housing coordinator, and to make dramatic changes to its housing and zoning practices after passing laws that focused on overcrowding in homes rented mostly by Hispanics. The U.S. Justice Department sued the town for illegally targeting Hispanics.

In a settlement last month, Freehold Borough agreed to pay $278,000 to change its housing inspection procedures and allow laborers to gather on public property after trying to shut down a day laborer gathering area.

The fear of such sanctions has several towns backtracking.

Over the summer the Township of Riverside passed a law fining employers and
landlords who hire or rent apartments to illegal immigrants. Now with the threat of lawsuits, the man who proposed the law … Mayor Charles Hilton … has called for its repeal.

Hilton, along with another council member who backed the ordinances, were voted out of office last month.

And in Newton and Keyport, officials introduced housing and hiring bans to their local governments, but never passed them.

Christopher Cotter, the city administrator of Summit, which toughened parking rules to keep contractors from blocking streets as they pick up day laborers, said the laws are passed out of frustration.

According to Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law, most local efforts like traffic, housing or loitering laws that try to solve immigration problems have consistently failed for one of two reasons: They are either ruled unconstitutional, or judges rule that immigration enforcement is under the jurisdiction of only the federal government.

"Good, bad or indifferent, local towns can't enforce federal immigration law," Chishti said. "The most they can do is put political pressure on Congress to make the change happen."

--Associated Press
Published: December 10. 2006 3:51PM