Banning illegal immigrant renters pricey, divisive

March 24, 2012|Nomaan Merchant, Associated Press

A Dallas suburb has spent five years and nearly $5 million trying to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments within city limits, but court challenges have kept the law from taking effect. Still, city officials say they’re likely to press on.

The fight has pushed Farmers Branch, a quiet collection of bedroom communities and office parks, into the national debate about illegal immigration. Local Latinos say it also has made U.S. citizens and legal immigrants feel unwelcome in the city, where the Latino population has fallen in recent years.

City officials and law backers argue that illegal immigrants strain local schools and police resources. They also note that local voters supported an early version of the law five years ago by a 2-to-1 margin.

“We’re trying to solve a problem that people perceive to have,’’ Mayor Jack Glancy told The Associated Press. “If the (federal) government would do what it’s supposed to do, we wouldn’t be in the middle of this thing.’’

The city council must now decide whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or push for a hearing before the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel last week upheld a lower court’s ruling blocking the law.

Farmers Branch’s city council, which has never included a Latino, has in recent years declared English to be the city’s official language and resisted efforts to shift voting from an at-large system, which Latinos complain dilutes their voice. The council first passed a renters’ ban in 2006, but replaced it two years later on the advice of its attorneys.

The new law would require all renters to obtain a city license and the city’s building inspector to check the status of any applicant who wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Illegal immigrants would be denied a renters’ permit, and landlords who knowingly allowed them to stay could have their renters’ license barred.

A federal judge put that law on hold after landlords and renters sued the city, and courts have continued to block it — most recently on Wednesday by the 5th Circuit.

Similar bans pushed in other cities, most notably Fremont, Neb., and Hazleton, Pa., are in the middle of similar court fights.

A judge recently allowed Fremont to require renters to obtain a permit but stopped the city from revoking the permits if renters were found to be illegal immigrants.

Hazleton’s law, which would sanction business owners for employing illegal immigrants and property owners for renting to them, also is on hold. But backers will get a new hearing because the Supreme Court last year, citing its decision in another case, vacated a federal appeals court’s ruling against the law.

source: Banning illegal immigrant renters pricey, divisive - Boston.com