HAZLETON, PA. Officials try local immigration approach

The law would come down hard on those who hire or house illegal immigrants.
HAZLETON, Pa. (AP) -- With tensions rising and its police department and municipal budget stretched thin, this small northeastern Pennsylvania city is about to begin what the mayor calls one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigrants anywhere in the United States.
"Illegal immigrants are destroying the city," said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. "I don't want them here, period."
Last week Barletta introduced, and the city council tentatively approved, a measure that would revoke the business licenses of companies that employ illegal immigrants; impose $1,000 fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants; and make English the official language of the city.
Reaction to crime
Barletta said he had no choice but to act after two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic were charged last month with shooting and killing a 29-year-old man. Other recent incidents involving illegal immigrants have rattled this former coal town 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, including the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for firing a gun at a playground.
"This is crazy," said Barletta, who took office in 2000. "People are afraid to walk the streets. There's going to be law and order back in Hazleton, and I'm going to use every tool I possibly can."
Municipal officials around the nation, frustrated at what they perceive as the federal government's inability to stem the tide of illegal immigration, have increasingly taken matters into their own hands.
In San Bernardino, Calif., voters will decide whether to adopt a measure nearly identical to the one in Hazleton. An Idaho county filed a racketeering lawsuit against agricultural companies accused of hiring illegal immigrants. In New Hampshire, a pair of police chiefs began arresting illegal immigrants for trespassing.
"They're being forced to pick up the financial tab for all of this nonsense and they are doing whatever they can to find ways to combat it at the local level," said Susan Tully, national field director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates limits on immigration. "This is a fine example of what I'm talking about."
Potential problems
But Flavia Jimenez, an immigrant policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza, said local authorities typically are not equipped to enforce immigration laws. She predicted the Hazleton crackdown would prompt a civil rights lawsuit.
"Landlords are going to shut their doors to anyone who may look or sound Latino," she said. "On the other hand, landlords may attempt to actually determine whether a person is undocumented or not, and make multiple mistakes because of the complexity of immigration law."
When Barletta took office in 2000, Hispanics represented only about 5 percent of the city's population of 23,000. The population has since shot up to 31,000, with Hispanics now comprising 30 percent, lured to Hazleton by cheap housing, a lower cost of living and jobs in nearby plants, factories and farms.
City officials don't know how many of the new arrivals are in the United States illegally but say they are fueling the drug trade, joining gangs and committing other crimes.
Whites seem to overwhelmingly favor the proposed crackdown. Barletta's office has been flooded with hundreds of approving e-mails and phone calls -- from as far as California and Florida -- and he got an impromptu standing ovation when he walked into a Hazleton diner for lunch.
"It's about time," said Francis X. Tucci, 57, who was born and raised in Hazleton and owns a hair salon in the heart of the Hispanic business district whose window is adorned with tiny American flags. "We were a nice community. You find bad everywhere, I understand that, but we're talking about here and now."
Hispanic reaction
Hispanics, meanwhile, are split on the measure. Some approve, saying they are fed up with crime and graffiti. "If I was mayor, I wouldn't let anyone in who had a criminal record," said Rafael Rovira, 69, a naturalized American citizen from the Dominican Republic.
Others view the proposal as punitive and unnecessary, saying that most illegal immigrants obey the law and only want to work. They point to the success of Wyoming Street, a colorful thoroughfare where dozens of businesses have opened in the past few years.
"It's going to scare a lot of people," said Christian Lechuga, 23, who emigrated from Mexico eight years ago.
His father, who came to the United States illegally in 1982, received amnesty in 1986 and now operates a grocery store and restaurant in Hazleton. Jose Lechuga, 42, said Barletta is "abusing his authority and abusing human rights."
"He's confusing illegal people with criminals," Jose Lechuga said.
The city council, which approved the measure by a 4-1 vote, must vote on it twice more before it can become law. The next vote is scheduled for mid-July.
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