Yes, indeedy, yeronner! You're proactive, you are!

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t know how to respond, I really don’t. On the one hand, yes, illegal immigration certainly seems to be the election issue du jour. On the other…this guy is a fucking moron. The only thing that disturbs me more than his obvious bigotry is how many people are buying into it. Otherwise it would be funny as shit. Let’s go to the quotes, shall we?

Yes, Mayor Barletta, I’m sure you’re being targeted by all those nasty, nasty illegal immigrants. And it’s all their fault, it really is. Heaven knows, your little community was probably perfect prior to the first illegal immigrant sneaking their way in.

“Come, see us pass racism into law!! We’ll even fine citizens who charge them money for shelter without seeing their birth certificates first!” And tell us, Mr. Mayor. How will people you suspect of being illegal immigrants prove they were born in this country? Social security cards don’t work anymore; plenty of illegals have 'em. Same with driver’s licenses. I know! How about we issue them some sort of sign or something? Maybe a permanent “OK” stamp on their forehead in that flourescent crap they use at amusement parks!

Tell me you did not really just say that. Please, please tell me that you are not judging the effectiveness of this stupid, bigotted law based on people not going to Mexican restaurants. Did it ever occur to you, you knuckle dragging, slow witted, brain dead asshole, that maybe people aren’t going because your racist bullshit is rampant, and they’re just gullible enough to believe all Mexican restaurants must be run by illegals? TELL ME YOU’RE NOT THIS STUPID!! Because if you are, that means i have to call into question the intelligence of the people who voted your sorry ass into office.

2

You don’t have to be a racist to have a problem with illegal immigration. The name itself says it all: illegal.

And perhaps his locale is afflicted by an increase in crime due to illegal immigrants. Without actual numbers it’s impossible to tell.

I do agree that the Mexican restaurant comment was out of line, and perhaps he is a racist, but that doesn’t change the underlying point of all of this legislation sweeping the nation, which is that illegal immigrants are, in fact, criminals.

3

I agree the law is wrong, but for somewhat different reasons. The law is probably illegal because Hazleton doesn’t have the authority to enforce immigration law. It’s a federal matter. For several years, congress has been whittling down the money and staffing of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Thus, they are able to say that illegal immigration is against the law, but they make little effort to enforce the law at a federal level. If congress really cared, the INS would be twice its present size.

Mayor Barletta is a fool, all right, and a bigot. He’s a bigot by national origin, though. I don’t know if it counts as racism. Is “Mexican” a race?

Landlords and employers have neither the authority nor the training to be INS agents. If you ask someone if he’s legal, and he presents credible ID, there should be no more obligation to check. This should have been done before the new law, though. It was already illegal to hire an illegal. As for renting to an illegal, I don’t know where the federal law stands.

4

It’s an excellent law. And we need more municipalities to pass them. People are getting fed up with the feds not doing their job. (wince, no pun intended)

I agree, the resaurant thing is dumb.

5

Give. Me. A break. You want to tell me that his wearing a Kevlar vest was anything other than playing to the crowd? It’s playing to fear, a tactic Republicans excel at. He specifically said it was due to “crime committed by illegal immigrants.” And if it weren’t racist, I have a hard time believing they’d also pass a law stating the official language of the town is English. Canadians speak better English than most Americans.

If you want something done about illegal immigration, then stop whining about how much you hate big government and taxes and actually agree to fund the INS.

Magellan, would you care to explain to me how fining someone for renting to “not our kind” is a good law? Or even a legal one? Many illegals present with false paperwork. How is an average citizen supposed to be able to tell a fake social security card and driver’s license from a real one? Or are we just not supposed to rent to brown people?

If you read the second page of the article, you’d note that Hispanic owned businesses are largely what’s contributed to the town’s increase in revenue and business.

6

Well, despite the fact that the guy in question sounds like a moron and a bigot, i actually think that, if we want to deal with illegal immigration properly, this sort of law might actually be the key.

Too often in the past, the only people punished by crackdowns on illegal immigration have been the immigrants themselves. Authorities conduct a raid, the illegals are all shipped off, and the employer suffers no consequences except having to go out and find a new batch of illegals. This despite the fact that people who employ illegals are, themselves, lawbreakers.

If we punish the employers as well as the illegal immigrants, it might actually force Americans to confront the real consequences of stamping down on illegal immigraiton. While the only people suffering the consequences are the imigrants themselves, and every bust merely results in new immigrants replacing old ones in their jobs, Americans can keep kidding themselves that “cracking down” on illegals in this way is a “good thing.”

But when the employers themselves–“good American citizens”–start getting shut down and hauled off, and businesses start to fold, and things that immigrants usually do don’t get done, then maybe people will wake up and realize that the whole zero tolerance policy on immigration is a fool’s errand and idiotic policy.

It’s amusing that the morons in debates like this who reduce everything to “illegal immigrants are criminals” always seem to focus only on the workers themselves, and never really seem that interested in enforcing the laws applying to employers. There seems to be this idea that illegal immigration is merely a supply-driven issue, and that no actual Americans are responsible for the demand for illegal labor.

The rental thing is more problematic. As Maureen points out, the consequences of such a law might simply lead to a “no brown people” situaiton, as landlords decide not to risk the possibility of being presented with false paperwork. Also, landlords aren’t meant to be responsible for determining a person’s eligibility to live in the country; employers are,m however, responsible for making sure that their employees are authorized to work here. As someone on a student visa, i know very well what this requires.

7

You know, I would have no problem proving that I am a native born U.S. citizen. My wife is a legal immigrant, and she would have no problem proving that either. For years we’ve been treated to the left wailing that the solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to crack down on the people who are hiring illegals. Now that it looks like someone has taken a step in that direction, you scream racism. Pathetic. I think this is a great move, and I wish that cities and states from sea to sea would adopt similar measures. There is plenty of room in America for legal immigrants. LEGAL immigrants. I wholeheartedly support legal immigration. Anyone who is here illegally should be deported forthwith. Bush is woefully out of touch on this issue, here’s hoping that this is the curl of a wave of local jurisdictions stepping up to do what the Feds should have done long ago, and that they shame the INS into following suit.

8

I don’t disagree with this at all. I have no issue with the idea that businesses should be punished for hiring illegal aliens. So you can take me out of the “moron” column at your earliest convenience.

9

No. I scream “racism” at this particular mayor. He is a racist. That crack about Mexican restaurants is flagrantly racist. As is anyone who has no problem with my children being stopped and asked to prove they were born here just because they happen to have a Hispanic last name. If you’re not breaking a law, you shouldn’t have to prove it. It’s the other way around here, remember?

10

Not really my field, but I’m thinking this could be a problem with current fair housing law. If a person of one race/national origin is acceptable with a credible ID, but another person of a different race/national origin is not acceptable with the same type of ID, methinks litigation will ensue.

Think there may also be questions of Federal Premption in some areas as well. Maybe hizzoner shoulda called this new law something like “Full Employment for Immigration and Civil Rights Attorneys Act”…

11

Just out of interest, why was it then that you responded to a story about penalties for employers with the argument that illegal immigrants are criminals?

Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to respond that the law is a good idea because people who employ illegals are criminals?

12

OK, I recall seeing a cite that there were 11,000,000 Mexican immigrants in America (legal and illegal). If that figure is off, someone can correct it.

Let’s be charitable and estimate that 1,000,000 of them have “marketable skills” in the immigration sense – whether a professional degree, IT competence, “skilled labor” or whatever.

At the present rate, if we admitted the legal quota of unskilled laborers from Mexico each and every year, and the numbers did not change, does anyone care to figure when the lot of them will have legally immigrated to this country?
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AD 5,002,005, that’s when.

The legal quota of unskilled laborers permitted to immigrate annually from Mexico is [size=3]TWO.

13

“Mexican” is a race now? Do tell me more. While his statement might have been moronic, you have fallen way short of proving any type of racism. Also, please show me where in the linked article it mentions stopping people and asking them to prove they are US born, I think I missed that part, AFAICT from the article the law applies only to employers and landlords. For that matter, could you please highlight the part where the article said that legal aliens of Mexican-hell, of any-descent would be impacted by this new law? Thanks in advance.

14

Oh, I don’t know… maybe because they are criminals? Go figure.

Not really. I probably would have done better to get that sidetracking argument out of the way right away by addressing it directly, but I didn’t. Sorry. Now I have.

15

Um, yes. Hispanic is a race. As for your little snipe, it was in direct response to something you said:

I could give a flying fuck if you’re happy to prove you’re 'Murkin. If the sole reason to stop someone in this town is they look as if they may be Other-than-white-insert-race-here, then yes, it’s racism, and yes, I have a problem with it.

16

I don’t work in Fair Housing but I do occasionally review contracts & leases for properties receiving federal funds for and if I were in the PA office I’d be pretty interested in how the terms of this ordinance stack up against the model leases the feds require landlords to execute. From hazy memory (haven’t done one in a while) landlords can generally terminate post-indication of criminal activity upon the property but I don’t remember recalling presenting proof of American citizenship.

Also, what’s this about not allowing the forms to be translated into any other language than English and how does that help staunch the flow of illegal immigration? Off the top of my head I can think of a few federal housing forms that are available in Spanish should the inquiree require and/or request one.

17

It’s a “sidetracking argument”?

Seems to me that the argument about the illegality of employing illegal immigrants is, or should be, central to the whole debate. After all, if Americans refused to hire these folks, surely the economic “pull” factors contributing to illegal imigration would be reduced? And if we treated these employers, and not just their employees, as lawbreakers, maybe it would change the whole tenor of the debate.

The fact that you believe that the issue of employers’ criminality is a “sidetracking argument” is typical of the lack of complexity and depth so prevalent in the whole immigration debate. So i’m afraid you do belong in the “moron” column.

18

Of course, there’s no push factor, either, is there? Cheap labor is there for the taking because illegal immigrants come in droves.

It’s a sidetracking argument because it’s usually only raised when someone points out that illegal immigrants are committing crimes. “But, but, but, what about the employers?!” we hear, every time, as if we are exonerating the businessmen. Implicit in the discussion is that the people who hire illegal immigrants are committing crimes. Only a genuine idiot would not associate the two. Therefore, it’s superfluous to the debate, or rather it’s a discussion all its own. Perhaps this thread is the place to have that discussion and I missed the tenor of the article. So be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. No, I simply focused on the alleged racism part of the OP, as if the very idea of enforcing the law was racist, which is another common distractor from the fact that we are talking about criminals.

But whatever. You want to call me an idiot, go ahead. It’s not the first time and it sure won’t be the last.

19

Mexican /= Hispanic. And I don’t believe that Hispanic is a race anyway, the term refers to a wide range of ethnic types, I think Hispanic is more of a culture. There are white Hispanics and there are black Hispanics too. In any event, the comment of mine that you were responding to was in response to your OP wailing about the onerous demands placed upon immigrants to prove they are legal (“How will people you suspect of being illegal immigrants prove they were born in this country? Social security cards don’t work anymore; plenty of illegals have 'em. Same with driver’s licenses. I know! How about we issue them some sort of sign or something? Maybe a permanent “OK” stamp on their forehead in that flourescent crap they use at amusement parks!”-remember?). It’s not such a huge demand as you make out. My wife is required to carry her green card with her at all times. That proves she is legal, AND AS SUCH SHE WOULDN’T BE SUBJECT TO ANY PUNISHMENT UNDER THE LAW TALKED ABOUT IN THE ARTICLE.

What you have a problem with is facts. You don’t seem to give a flying fuck about accuracy either. I am going to ask you straight out the two questions you have been avoiding:

#1. Where does it say anything about this law affecting legal immigrants? It’s not about being “American”, it’s about being here and working legally.

#2. Please provide a cite that this law would involve the authorities randomly stopping anyone who appears “Mexican” (or “Hispanic” if you prefer) and demanding that they present their bona fides. If you can not provide a cite for that statement, please stop repeating it.

20

Never said there wasn’t. But while American policy probably can’t do much about the push factor, it can indeed have a strong influence on the pull factor. Our first responsibility, in cases like this, is to take responsibility for the things we can influence directly, so surely the pull factor needs to be where we concentrate our main efforts.

Unless you’re advocating massive aid to Mexico in order to help them fix the push factor? I thought not.

Why is it, then, that this proposal to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants seems so surprising and new? And why is it that the actions of American employers make up such a negligible (one might even say invisible) part of the whole debate over illegal immigration?

You say you believe that “only a genuine idiot would not associate the two,” but why then is it that the question of employers is barely even raised in debates like this? Why is it that policy debates barely ever seem to address the issue of what should be done with employers who flout the law? You seem to be arguing that this stuff is so obvious it shouldn’t even need to be said, but the fact is that it does need be said, it needs to be addressed explicitly, otherwise those who engage in the immigration debate give the impression that they’re only concerned about one group of lawbreakers.

I still think that anyone who believes that the actions of American employers are “superfluous to the debate” or “a discussion all its own” is demonstrating a basic misunderstanding or ignorance of how a problem like this needs to be addressed. Leaving the employers out of the discussion might be convenient for those who want to focus only on the criminality of the immigrants, and to pretend that this is merely a problem of external causation, but the results of such a tactic are merely to hide half the problem.

You’re too hard on yourself. I believe you have the capacity to overcome the problem.