Immigrant Law Goes to Voters in Texas Town

Immigrant Law Goes to Voters in Texas Town
Contentious Ordinance Would Prohibit Renting To Illegal Residents

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 12, 2007; A03



FARMERS BRANCH, Tex. -- On Saturday, voters in this Dallas suburb will decide whether to keep a local ordinance designed to do what city leaders believe the federal government has forsaken: control the number of illegal immigrants.

It will be the first time that such a law will be subjected to a popular vote instead of merely the scrutiny of a government body.

The local law, already the subject of four lawsuits, emotional community debate and scholarly reports, would prohibit landlords from renting to most undocumented immigrants. The fine for noncompliance would be $500 a day.

When passed, the law was billed as essential to the well-being and safety of the city and a key to "revitalizing and reinvigorating" this bedroom community, whose population has remained 28,000 since 1970 but whose demographics have changed dramatically. In 1970, the city was 100 percent white; today 40 percent of its residents are minority, mostly Hispanic. Entire strip malls are lined with mom-and-pop shops catering to Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants; large, older apartment complexes on one end of the city, the targets of the local ordinance, are filled with Spanish-speaking renters.

"I don't believe that if every illegal alien moves out of Farmers Branch, every problem in Farmers Branch is solved," said Tim O'Hare, a 37-year-old member of the City Council who was born and raised here and who sponsored the rental ordinance. "But it is one of the things that needs to be done. . . . If the federal government enforced its own laws, it would be easier on the city of Farmers Branch."

Opponents, including apartment building owners, contend the ordinance is not only discriminatory, but would force landlords to act as federal immigration officers and would put the job of regulating immigration, a federal responsibility, in local hands.

"This has also given people, for some reason, the right to voice their bigotry in a very public way," said Ana Reyes, 33, who was born in Indiana but has lived most of her life in Farmers Branch and is working with the group, Let the Voters Decide, to defeat the ordinance at the polls. "I've been called a wetback and yelled at to 'go back to Mexico.' "

Almost 90 cities or counties nationwide have proposed, passed or rejected laws with similar landlord prohibitions or penalties for businesses that employ undocumented workers. Officials in Hazleton, Pa., the first city in the country to adopt such laws, are awaiting a federal judge's decision in a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of its ordinance. Hazleton proposed fining landlords $1,000 per day for every illegal immigrant living on their property and revoking the licenses of businesses that hire undocumented workers. In Escondido, Calif., officials abandoned a similar rental ordinance after spending $200,000 defending it and projecting another $800,000 in bills to continue the legal battle.

Last November, the Farmers Branch City Council passed its rental prohibition, the first such ordinance in Texas, and said it would go into effect in January. The council also declared English the official language of the city and passed a resolution to allow jail officials to attend a federal training program on enforcing immigration law.

Under pressure, the council revamped the ordinance in January. And when opponents gathered enough signatures to force Saturday's referendum, they agreed to await the results. Four separate lawsuits have been filed against the city by apartment owners, a resident and civil rights and immigrant advocacy organizations. If approved, the rental law will take effect May 22, but opponents have said they would seek a court order barring its enforcement.

Reyes and volunteers with Let the Voters Decide, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and other opponents of the law are hoping the enthusiasm shown last spring by supporters of the big pro-immigrant march in Dallas will carry over into Saturday's election. More than a million people -- hundreds of thousands of them in Dallas, including some Farmers Branch residents -- marched in dozens of cities nationwide to protest a U.S. House bill that would, among other things, have made illegal immigrant status a felony rather than a civil violation.

By the end of early voting here, which concluded Tuesday, election officials said that more than 3,000 residents, or almost 21.5 percent of registered voters, had cast ballots. The past two municipal elections have drawn only about 700 votes, officials said, indicating a high level of interest in the referendum. About 1,200 of the registered voters are Latino.

Both sides have recently brought out local public officials, current and past, to support their positions. The opponents talk about the futility of passing a law that will keep the city fighting lawsuits for months at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded legal fees. The supporters call such proclamations "scare tactics."

Two City Council seats are also on the ballot, and the five candidates vying for them built their campaigns on their pro- or anti-ordinance positions.

"I want to be a part of what makes Farmers Branch move forward and to be part of the Farmers Branch revitalization program," said candidate Tim Scott at a recent "meet and greet" in a neighborhood of residents who largely supported the ordinance prohibiting renting to illegal immigrants. "I don't want to live in a city that has to deal with gang violence."

Jennifer Maddux, who hosted the gathering, agreed. "Why wait for the federal government while we go under? They let it get this way."

But across town, 20-year resident Jeff Rotundo disagreed. "I have more problems with the fire ants in Farmers Branch than I do with the Hispanics or illegal immigrants," he said. "When I first got here, it was open arms to everybody. Now the town is divided. I think it's a racial issue. . . . I'm a little embarrassed to be a resident here at this point."