Essay 1230

From The Chicago Tribune…

-------------------------------

Mayberry I.N.S.

Back in August, the mayor of Arcadia, Wis., proposed a local crackdown on illegal immigrants. “They are not welcome here!” Mayor John Kimmel wrote in a column in the hometown newspaper. He said he’d create a task force to report undocumented workers and would levy fines against landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. English should be the official language of Arcadia, he said.

Within weeks he’d changed his mind. His plan divided residents, angered local businesses and raised the specter of a lawsuit by the ACLU. Saying he found the reaction “surprising and humbling,” Kimmel withdrew his proposal.

We bring this up because the Village of Carpentersville has stepped on the same hornet’s nest. Two trustees have drafted an ordinance that sounds a great deal like Kimmel’s plan. They were going to introduce it Oct. 3, but more than 3,000 people showed up for a meeting in a room that holds 212. The meeting was postponed.

The fallout in Carpentersville has been a lot like that in Arcadia. Some residents say the ordinance is a slap in the face to Hispanics, who make up about 40 percent of the village’s 37,000 population. Others wonder aloud how many of their neighbors are here illegally; they complain that immigrants are straining village services and not paying their share of taxes. Businesses say that if it weren’t for immigrants, they’d have to close for lack of employees or customers. And the village’s insurer has warned that the ordinance would invite a lawsuit.

Trustee Paul Humpfer says he co-wrote the ordinance because federal agencies charged with enforcing immigration laws “haven’t done a very good job.” He’ll get no argument about that here. Dozens of communities across the country, frustrated by the broken immigration system and Congress’ failure to fix it, have tried to take matters into their own hands. But that’s a mistake. It costs a lot of money to try to do the federal government’s job for it, especially if you trash your local economy in the process. Asking landlords to enforce immigration laws makes about as much sense as requiring grocers to demand a green card before selling a gallon of milk. And if one town applies immigration laws scrupulously and the town next door doesn’t, guess which town gets the labor shortage?

We haven’t quite despaired of the idea that Congress will enact meaningful reforms. In the meantime, individual towns should resist the urge to set up municipal versions of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service. The federal government took over the regulation of immigration more than a century ago precisely because the states were setting up a quilt of rules. The feds are having a hard time getting it right, but the patchwork approach doesn’t help.