In an effort to combat crime, amongst other noble causes, the mayor of Hazleton, PA, Lou Barletta, sought passage of a city ordinance that would make all city documents be printed in English only, fine landlords renting to illegal aliens, revoke city licenses from companies hiring illegal aliens, and so on.
Barletta, whose name smacks distinctly of an Italian immigrant, said he had to wear a bullet-proof vest while voting in fear of those murderous mobs of immigrants that this law will suddenly banish into the coal-ridden hinterlands where they may scratch at the burnt Earth like Lot in the Bible.
Most interesting to me was the quote:
"What you see here tonight, really, is a city that wants to take back what America has given it," Barletta said.
(Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203513,00.html)
That's funny, because I think that the part of the land you're living on was sold from one man who didn't own it to William Penn, and the original settlers in the area fought the local Indian tribes to hold on to it. Your family, my family, every family that settled in Hazleton were immigrants, and I'm sure a lot of them did not show up legally.
And fighting immigration like this is not going to lower crime. To say that all crime is because of the immigrant population and that suddenly printing all the city documents in only English will make everything better is just silly.
Here's an idea. Why don't you guys try engaging the immigrant populations? Empower the civic leaders amongst the immigrants, work with their churches and business leaders, and make them a part of the community. By doing that they help you keep crime lower, help you find the troublemakers, and make sure that the people on the fringes, like the people who can't speak English, don't fall through the cracks of society.
Laws like this do nothing to help anyone.
