STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Have you guys heard about this? I've been following it for a while cause my boyfriend is actually from Hazleton, but it was on 60 minutes tonight. It's a small town in PA that has enacted an ordinance punishing business who employ illegal immigrants, and landlords who rent to them. In order to rent an apartment you have to provide proof of citizenship status that is then cross-verified with a national immigration database. They're doing this because they've had a huge boom in their illegal population over the past few years, and at the same time, have also seen a big surge in violent crime, school enrollment, and hospital visits by non-insured patients, and the mayor thinks getting rid of illegal immigrants will get rid of his problems.

I have mixed feelings about it. In theory, it sort of makes sense, and since immigrants are now leaving town in droves, I guess the mayor's methods will prove to have been effective if they now also see a drop in all those things I mentioned above. But from having visited the town, and heard my boyfriend's family talking about the situation, I know that this law is rooted in deep-seated racism as much as it is a pragmatic desire to get rid of people who are putting a strain on the community. They don't like hispanics, period, and they don't want them in their town, legal or not. I think this ordinance validates people's racist sentiments, and I think every law-abiding immigrant, and every hispanic citizen or resident alien, is going to suffer for it because it stigmatizes them and legitimizes the other citizens' inclination to think poorly of them.

Obviously I don't have any answers on the issue... but I just find this solution to be really ugly and counter-productive. This law doesn't do anything to address any of the root problems of crime or poverty, all it does is marginalize hispanic immigrants, and broadcast the fact that they are unwelcome in this town. So what happens then, they just go somewhere else--and all the problems he's blaming on them just get shunted off on somebody else's city? How is that a solution for anything?