Pahrump strips act of limits on commerce

Ordinance retains language, flag rules
By Timothy Pratt
Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stori ... mmigration

One speaker stepped up to address the Pahrump Town Board earlier this week packing a 9 mm pistol on his hip, ready to speak his mind.

That was the old Pahrump.

Another, a stranger to most of those present, who happened to be president of the Nevada Bankers Association, read a prepared statement about the long arm of federal law perhaps stretching from Capitol Hill to the town of 35,000 on the western side of the Spring Mountains.

That was the new Pahrump - and the new world for dozens of local governments around the nation as they try to tackle an issue that has stymied Congress: immigration.

The old and new merged in Pahrump - not necessarily harmoniously - at the town's regular board meeting Tuesday, where a stripped-down version of the "English Language and Patriot Reaffirmation Ordinance" was read into the record for the first time.

With that, Pahrump joined at least 30 towns, cities and counties around the nation that have recently voted on or are debating legislation in response to the growing number of illegal immigrants on their Main Streets.

After two more meetings, the Pahrump board could vote on the ordinance next month.

But members will be voting on a different version than originally proposed, as board member Michael Miraglia yanked three sections Tuesday that would have made it illegal to employ, house or loan money to an undocumented immigrant.

The reason, Miraglia said, was "the financial cost of defending it in case we're attacked."

The scale back also made Pahrump part of a national trend. From California to New Jersey to Florida, several experts said, local governments often begin by attempting to cast a wide net over immigrants, only to pull back when political realities surface.

"The pattern that I've seen is that as soon as municipalities look at these ordinances under sufficient scrutiny, they see how many ways they would be unworkable," said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

Jonathan Blazer of the National Immigration Law Center said many town boards find themselves "on shaky legal ground" as ordinances seeking to legislate on immigration begin to move through the political process.

"It's easy to begin thumping your chest ... but if the ordinance gets thrown out in court, at the end of the day, what's it worth?" Blazer said.

Miraglia said Pahrump's town attorney advised him that legal challenges to the parts of the ordinance attempting to limit commerce with illegal immigrants could have cost the town up to $50,000.

"Pahrump does not have the money to defend it in court," Miraglia said.

Elsewhere, other ordinances have failed, or been stripped down, because they're difficult if not impossible to enforce, Blazer said.

He pointed out how one of the more publicized cases - in Hazelton, Pa. - would have made it illegal to sell a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread to an undocumented immigrant.

That ordinance passed, than was challenged in court. It was then withdrawn, amended and passed again, according to Blazer.

Miraglia's revised ordinance now is reduced to making English the official language of town government in Pahrump.

The other clauses that it retains make it illegal to fly a foreign flag by itself and prohibits the town from offering benefits to undocumented immigrants.

At Tuesday's meeting, bankers association president Bill Uffelman called the slimming down of the ordinance "good news" for his industry.

"It allows us to continue banking according to federal regulations," he said.

Blazer said that Pahrump may not be the last town in Nevada to look at such ordinances.

"If Congress fails to pass workable immigration reform, then there will continue to be pent-up frustration at the local level and that will result in more attempts at legislating on different aspects of the immigration issue," he said.

Uffelman, aware that other local governments may attempt to grab hold of an issue that historically has rested in federal hands, sent an e-mail to his 45-plus members statewide alerting them to that possibility.

"(We) have to anticipate other locales may consider similar ordinances," he wrote.

"Because of the difficulty in finding out about local proposals and variations in local government processes, it is incumbent on bankers at your branches to monitor what is going on in their communities and give us a heads up so we can respond in a timely fashion."