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.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Farmers Branch
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Bad and Good…
Some of my feelings concerning the results of our mid-term election:
BAD:
With respect to the mid-term election, I’m pretty happy with most of the results, especially on the national level. Here at home, however, I am greatly disappointed that Maggie Charleton didn’t win her bid for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) District 9 seat. Maggie is eminently qualified for the position and she campaigned her heart out, but the Texas election system deck of cards was stacked against her from the get-go. The deck was stacked against her because under screwy Texas law this is a partisan position. What the hell does a person’s political ideology honestly have to do with the process of ensuring the accuracy of text books?
The nincompoop who got re-elected to that position, Don McLeroy, didn’t win because he is the best person suited for the job, he won because too damn many people voted a straight Republican Party ticket.
Because too many people vote a straight party ticket, that means the odds nearly insurmountably favor whichever political party garners the most vote.
State Board of Education positions, like judges, shouldn’t be partisan positions. Candidates should be voted into office based on their qualifications, not their political affiliation.
Maggie’s belief is that the SBOE should review textbooks to see whether they meet the standards set by experts, not for a particular view of the world. Unfortunately, the candidate with screwy world views won, but it wasn’t at all because folks thoughtfully determined he was the most qualified person to serve.
GOOD:
Minimum Wage Ballot Measures
Some of the best news from yesterday’s election is that in each of the six states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio) that had ballot measures calling for an increase in their state’s minimum wage, voters resoundingly voted to do so. The strongest vote in favor was in Missouri, where that state’s ballot initiative garnered 76% of the votes. Montanans voted 73% in favor; Nevadans 69%; Arizonans 66%; Ohioans 56%; and Coloradoans 53%.
And now that the Puppets-For-The-Rich Republicans had the keys to the front doors of the house and senate chambers taken away from them, I’m certain we’ll see an increase in the federal minimum wage, too—and I don’t think our most disingenuous, duplicitous and dangerous-to-democracy president ever will dare veto it.
BAD:
My prediction that the commonsense voters in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District wouldn’t elect Bill Sali, but would, instead, vote for Larry Grant, missed by a couple of percentage points. With 96% of the precincts reporting, Sali has 50% of the vote to Grant’s 45%. Three other folks in the race divvied up the remainder. I hope Larry Grant will hang in there and decide to run in the next go round; I think he’d be very good for his district and for the country.
GOOD:
Pennsylvania incumbent Senator Rick “Intelligent-Design-Should-Be-Taught-In-Schools” Santorum, the third-ranking Senate Republican, got tossed out on his ear by the commonsense voters in that state. They replaced him with state treasurer Bob Casey. Casey is opposed to abortion rights and gun control, but is in favor of increasing the minimum wage and providing health insurance to our millions of uninsured children.
GOOD:
Commonsense voters in South Dakota rejected the draconian referendum to ban all abortions in that state (except to save the lives of pregnant women) by a 56% vote, and commonsense voters in Oregon and California rejected initiatives in their states that called for parental notification for teenagers to receive abortions.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Texas animal cruelty law loopholes
Beware: this posting deals with animal cruelty and is very disturbing.
Last Thursday two Bryan, Texas college students were arrested on felony charges of animal cruelty and criminal mischief relating to the murder of a horse. According to the report in our local paper, the two students chased two horses around a pasture with golf clubs and polo mallets. One of the students told police that the other student wanted to kill one of the horses because they chased him the last time he was in the pasture. He said this other student struck the horse on the head with a polo mallet--knocking it down--and then jumped on top of the horse and began slashing at its neck with a knife. Both students then ran off, but later returned. The student who accused his friend of wanting to kill the horse then himself rammed a broken golf club into the chest and heart of the horse to "put it out of its misery."
I can’t begin to comprehend how a human being could commit such an inhumane act. I’ve really tried to figure it out, but so far I can’t get past the angry stage—and I best not say what punishment I’d like to inflict on the guilty parties.
But, while I got mad and sick to my stomach when I read about this sadistic crime in the morning paper, I’m even sicker and madder about it now because of what I’ve found out about our grossly deficient animal cruelty laws here in Texas.
The current animal cruelty statute (Texas Penal Code Section 42) is riddled with loopholes (put there intentionally and not) like the one that prevented the Bell County Attorney from prosecuting a man who deliberately ran over his own puppy with a lawn mower “because the cruelty law only covers killing someone else's animal and because the puppy's instant death didn't meet the law's definition of terror.”
In Harris County, animal cruelty law loopholes prevented the prosecution of a man who killed several kittens by stomping on their heads and warned his mother, who'd been feeding the animals, that he'd do the same to her.
In Waco, animal cruelty law loopholes prevented the prosecution of two Baylor University baseball players for shooting, decapitating, and skinning a cat nicknamed Queso that hung around a fast-food restaurant.
Other examples of horrific animal cruelty acts that have gone unpunished in this state because of loopholes, include: skinning and decapitating a feral cat; tying a dog to a tree and hammering it to death with a claw hammer; bludgeoning 22 emus with an aluminum baseball bat; burning a rabbit alive; and mutilating a live kitten.
As an example of one of the biggest loopholes, according to sub-sections (A)(5) and (9) of the Code, it is not a crime here in Texas for someone to kill, seriously injure, or administer poison to a stray animal or another person’s cattle, horses, sheep, swine, or goats. That is shear lunacy!
It is incomprehensible to me that our Texas legislators allotted themselves sufficient time to draft, debate and pass legislation making it a felony for an individual in the state to own six or more dildos (a law that was just a few weeks ago upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States when they refused to consider a challenge to its constitutionality), but they didn’t have the sense or time to close these and other loopholes in the animal cruelty law.
Given the loopholes, I don’t know how the animal cruelty charges against the two students will play out. If they’re not guilty, that’s one thing, but to escape responsibility and appropriate punishment for the horrible means used to murder that horse because of loopholes that have been intentionally allowed to remain, would be beyond absurd; it would be a crime against our humanity.
I intend to follow this matter very closely and will be reporting here on further developments.
