Thread: Tiny town takes on illegal immigration issue.

click on this link to read the complete op-ed article by Georgie Anne Geyer.
http://www.dispatch.com/editorials-stor ... A9-02.html

I'm sending a copy of this to my elected representatives at the local and state level. My fear is we will wait until we have also lost our present quality of life befire taking action.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, USA | OCTOBER 11, 2006 | TEXT-ONLY VERSION
CURRENTLY: 66° PARTLY CLOUDY

The Columbus Dispatch

Tiny town raises concern over
illegal-immigration issue
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
GEORGIE ANNE GEYER

Every once in a while, a person with a genuine cause gives me pause: Could this person's relatively small issue be the beginning of something bigger?

Could little Hazleton, Pa., for instance, set the stage for some answers to our many illegal immigration questions? Could its young mayor, Louis J. Barletta, be one of the unsung heroes of these days? After he spoke recently in Washington, my answer to both of those questions is an enthusiastic yes.

Barletta presides over Hazleton, until recently a prosperous and uniquely civil little city of beautiful old houses and growing industrial zones. It lies 45 miles south of Scranton and has a population of 31,000.

Everything was going well until 2001, he told us, "when I noticed things were changing. The population ballooned from 23,000 to 31,000 in a very short time, and suddenly we were seeing blight in our neighborhoods."

Quickly, the little city changed. A man was killed after a football game in a drug deal gone bad; last spring, a 14- year-old was arrested for shooting a gun in the playground; gangland graffiti began appearing on the walls of homes; and finally a 29-year-old man was shot between the eyes and killed. The four men arrested in the killing were all illegal aliens. Suddenly it was not uncommon to wait four to five hours in the emergency rooms, schools became miserably overcrowded, and one imaginative illegal was apprehended with five different Social Security cards.

"I couldn't sleep," Barletta said. "I realized I'd veritably lost my city. And we only had 31 police officers — we should have had at least 60. Although crime was up by 10 percent, violent crime had doubled. We'd lost the quality of life of the city I was raised in. Imagine me telling my people, 'Don't worry, I'll tell the federal government — they're building a wall.' " He paused. "They don't want to hear about Washington and a wall. They expect their local officials to protect them."

And so Mayor Barletta did just that. The problem, of course, was the sudden high number of illegal aliens, almost all from Mexico — the same problem that towns and cities across the nation are having. Legal Mexican or Hispanic immigrants or citizens enthusiastically supported Barletta and what came next.

Last spring, the city voted in an ordinance, the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, to suspend the licenses of companies who hire illegals, to hold landlords accountable (a $1,000 fine) for renting to illegals, and (in a separate ordinance) to make English the official language of education and government. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union and other pro-immigration groups are suing the city as a "mean-spirited" nest of racists.
But what makes the Hazleton example stand out is that it has no racist component; to the contrary, it exemplifies a rational, non-discriminatory philosophy about illegal immigration.

Of the English requirement, for instance, the mayor says simply: "When neighbors can no longer speak to neighbors, that's when divisions come in and a city becomes divided." This grandson of Italian immigrants, who proudly spoke only English except at home, angrily dismisses the popular threat from the left branding anyone who is against uncontrolled immigration as racist. "Illegal doesn't have a race," he said, his face darkening for just a moment. "I embrace all legal residents."

Curiously, Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam has recently published bleak findings of his research showing how the ethnic diversity passions of the pro-immigration left are breaking down the public civility that Barletta is striving to maintain. The more diverse a community is, says Putnam, author of the 2000 book on societal atomization, Bowling Alone, the more likely that its inhabitants don't trust anyone in the community.

"In the presence of diversity, we hunker down," Putnam said last week. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us." Moreover, the death of trust moves beyond individuals: "They don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions. The only thing there's more of is protest marches and TV-watching."

In Hazleton, most of the illegals, sensing the mood, just got up and left. Other states are studying the Hazleton example, which was similar to an ordinance passed in San Bernardino, Calif.

Can that original trust of communities like these be saved, re-created, restructured? That, indeed, is one of the leading questions of our times. Georgie Anne Geyer writes for Universal Press Syndicate.

In Hazleton, most of the illegals, sensing the mood, just got up and left. Other states are studying the Hazleton example, which was similar to an ordinance passed in San Bernardino, Calif.

Good...I hope that every city follows the example of Hazleton, until eventually the only place the illegals have to go is back to their own country.

Originally Posted by americangirl

In Hazleton, most of the illegals, sensing the mood, just got up and left. Other states are studying the Hazleton example, which was similar to an ordinance passed in San Bernardino, Calif.

Good...I hope that every city follows the example of Hazleton, until eventually the only place the illegals have to go is back to their own country.

Exactly. That is called self deportation. Let's get it kicked into high gear.