Pennsylvania town strengthens immigrant law

Pennsylvania town strengthens immigrant law
Lets legal workers sue employer if business license revoked for hiring illegals

Officials in the Pennsylvania town of Hazleton on Friday strengthened a local law designed to drive illegal immigrants away in a bid to defend the measure against legal challenges.

Hazleton City Council passed a new version of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, an ordinance first passed in July that was already one of the toughest anti-illegal immigrant laws in the country. It has since been copied by other cities where illegal immigration is blamed for rising crime and overburdened social services.

The new law, approved by a vote of 4-1, increases pressure on local employers to avoid hiring illegal immigrants and raises fines for landlords who rent rooms to them.

Legal employees can now sue their employers for any work lost as a result of a business license being revoked because a company was found to have hired illegal immigrants.

The new law would also revoke a business license within three days of a violation being discovered. The previous statute would only have canceled a license at the time of renewal. Landlords will have to pay $250 a day for every illegal alien they are accommodating.

"This law is tougher in many ways," said Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta who led the campaign for the ordinance. He says the quality of life in the town of 31,000 has fallen because of an influx of illegal immigrants, mostly from Central America.

The new law is designed mainly to withstand legal challenges that Barletta said could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, have already filed suit against Hazleton.

David Vaida, an attorney representing opponents of the law, predicted at the council meeting that it would create a "climate of fear."

"I don't think that you want to live in a town where you are going to pit neighbor against neighbor," he said.

Hazleton's Hispanic population has reached about a third of the town's total in the last five years. An estimated 25 percent of immigrants are believed to be illegal.