Farmers Branch

As reported today in the New York Times and elsewhere this week, these City Council members of Farmers Branch, Texas, a Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex bedroom community with an estimated 2005 population of 26,400—about a third of whom are Spanish/Hispanic/Latino—voted unanimously this past Monday in favor of an ordinance fining landlords who rent to “illegal” immigrants up to $500 per undocumented person, per day.

I guess that means any landlord who rented to this guy would be in violation of that resolution:



Fining landlords for renting to “illegal” immigrants is goofy. How the hell are landlords supposed to tell whether someone they rent to is in this country legally or not? As this Farmers Branch apartment manager put it:

''The last thing I want to be doing is asking, 'Where's your papers?' And how am I supposed to know if what they're giving me is real?"

Undoubtedly, this resolution was based on a similar measure passed in July of this year by the Hazleton, Pennsylvania city council. A federal judge, however, has issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the city of Hazleton from enforcing its “Illegal Immigration Relief Act.”

I don’t know how the Hazleton legal case will turn out, but I do know this: the narrow-mindedness responsible for this crude attempt to control undocumented immigration into this country forgot something: undocumented immigrants are human beings entitled to dignity, respect and every other human right. What is that city council going to do when this resolution goes into effect—immediately evict every apartment renter in their city whom they think is in this country illegally? What about someone who doesn’t look like a Mexican or South American? How would they know that a Caucasian-looking person isn’t an “illegal” immigrant from Ireland or Canada or Georgia (the Eastern Europe post-Soviet state, not the U.S. entity a few doors east of Texas)? And given that nothing I’ve read about this Farmers Branch resolution mentions it, I take it that it would be ok for a realtor in that city to sell a home to an undocumented immigrant.

Undocumented migration into this country is primarily an economic issue. Like my paternal grandparents who emigrated to this country from Poland 100 years ago, folks are going to migrate to improve their condition, that is, to secure a better life for themselves and their families. And no amount of xenophobic-driven regulation is going to stop that.

Why do I think these Farmers Branch resolutions are driven by xenophobia? For one, a few dozen communities nationwide have implemented, considered, or rejected similar decrees that make it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants. And invariably accompanying those decrees, as is the case in Farmers Branch, is a second resolution calling for English to be that community’s “official language.” If the intent of the rental restrictions is, as purported by its pushers, to thwart illegal immigration, then I fail to see what the English-Only resolutions have to do with that. The coupling of these resolutions together is evidence of the nefarious and odious motives of these pushers.

As I indicate above, the Farmers Branch council members also voted in favor of this resolution requiring city officials to conduct nearly all official business in English.

Taking it on its own, it seems to me that the thinking behind such English-Only proposals is backwards. The constructive approach would be to improve upon the woefully inadequate English literacy adult educational resources available to immigrants. As this article points out, enrollment in adult English classes continues to boom, but funding is a bust. Immigrants want to learn English, but English-Only laws in no way help them accomplish that.

Limiting government services to English-Only is, as Senator Daniel Akaka has stated, a disservice to us all. Indisputable and significant social and economic benefits to individuals and to our society come with improved English language literacy; why some folks work against that is beyond me.

Another thing I don’t understand about the Farmers Branch city council’s action is that the council member who pushed these resolutions, Tim O’Hare, withdrew another one that would have penalized businesses that hire undocumented workers. Something fishy is going on there; does the city council think it’s ok for, say, a city-licensed landscaping contractor to hire undocumented workers—who in turn tend the lawns of those council members—but not ok for another city-licensed business to rent an apartment to them? Why was that resolution withdrawn? Surely O’Hare isn’t going to say “because laws are already on the books that cover that.” He can’t say that because that would be an admission that current federal regulations governing that matter are working—and that would take away another argument advanced by these pushers that local folks have to do something because the feds and state government aren’t.

In addition, as the mayor of Farmers Branch has acknowledged, these resolutions, which are not scheduled to go into effect until January, have already resulted in an economic disservice to that city and its residents because an agricultural products company has put off plans to relocate there as a result of the controversy. That’s too bad for this community, but I suspect that’s not going to be the only economic repercussion Farmers Branch will experience as a result of these resolutions.

Intolerance and xenophobia are the principle driving forces behind these divisive and non-constructive resolutions. Kicking a renter out of or preventing a renter from living in a residence because they don’t have proper documentation is not a family value that I’m aware of. And passing English-Only rules hasn’t anything at all to do with undocumented immigration.