Come one, come all!

The Providence Journal: City officials in a few municipalities around America -- New York, Newark, N.J., and San Francisco, among them -- that have their communities declared “sanctuary cities” for illegal aliens ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are encouraging lawbreaking and the flow of even more illegal aliens into the United States.

This may be popular with some groups, but not with the mass of the citizenry, who must live with the legal and economic effects of the influx of illegal aliens, and really do think that this should be a country where laws, federal and otherwise, are respected. State and local laws, by the way, are not supposed to contradict federal ones.

Setting a bad example

In “sanctuary cities,” city employees are discouraged from, or in some places face an outright ban on, reporting illegal immigrants to federal officials. Thus they are told to countenance breaking the law. What an example for public officials to set!

Sadly, Providence, R.I., City Councilman Migual Luna wants Providence to become such a city. Luna’s proposed ordinances would bar city employees, including the police, from inquiring into the immigration status of people in the city, or reporting suspected illegals to federal immigration officers, unless the person has committed a felony offense. (How is the average city worker supposed to know that someone might have a criminal record?)

Luna says that his ordinances “will prohibit city officials or law enforcement from working with immigration (officials).” He says his main idea in encouraging people to ignore federal law is to avoid deterring people from using city services.

This is a staggeringly irresponsible proposal, and one grotesquely unfair to people who want to respect the law, including most especially those immigrants who came here legally. And these laws, of course, encourage more illegal immigration.