Florida Town to Root Out Landlords Who Rent to Illegal Immigrants

This article was published in my hometown newspaper and is about a neighboring town, Avon Park, FL. Interesting. I'm proud of this guy!

Published Monday, July 10, 2006 The Lakeland, FL Ledger
Monday, July 10, 2006

Avon Park May Shut Door on Illegal Immigrants
By ABBY GOODNOUGHThe New York Times


AVON PARK -- Tom Macklin, the mayor of this city deep in Florida's citrus belt, heard the idea on talk radio and latched on with relish. A city up north, Hazleton, Pa., planned to root out and punish landlords who rented to illegal immigrants, fining them $1,000 for every such tenant. Macklin, whose own small city has swelled with immigrants from Mexico, Haiti and Jamaica over the past decade, swiftly proposed the same for Avon Park.

AVON PARK -- Tom Macklin, the mayor of this city deep in Florida's citrus belt, heard the idea on talk radio and latched on with relish.A city up north, Hazleton, Pa., planned to root out and punish landlords who rented to illegal immigrants, fining them $1,000 for every such tenant.

Macklin, whose own small city has swelled with immigrants from Mexico, Haiti and Jamaica over the past decade, swiftly proposed the same for Avon Park."It was almost as if I was sitting in church at a revival and he was preaching to me," Macklin said of Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton, whom he heard promoting that city's Illegal Immigration Relief Act on a radio show last month. "If we address the housing issue -- make it as difficult as possible for illegals to find safe haven in Avon Park -- then they are going to have to find someplace else to go."Like Hazleton's proposal, Avon Park's would deny business permits to companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The ordinance, which states that illegal immigration "destroys our neighborhoods and diminishes our overall quality of life," would also make English the official language of Avon Park, removing Spanish from all city documents, signs and automated phone messages.The proposal has some of Avon Park's roughly 8,800 residents exalting, others fuming and still others -- including those who rent rooms or apartments in the scruffy Golden Age Villas, west of the abandoned train tracks -- plain scared.

The City Council passed it, 3-2, on the first reading and is likely to adopt it July 24."We just wouldn't be able to stay here," said Armando Garcia Cortes, 45, who said he came to Avon Park from Veracruz, Mexico, to pick oranges and fix roofs. "They're going to see the farmworker population here drop. We would all be leaving."John Koch, who sells glassware and model cars at the Broken Spoke Flea Market on Main Street, said that would be fine."I think it's long overdue," Koch said of the proposal. "If you don't put a cap on it, it just gets out of hand.

"Both Macklin and Barletta said they were forced into drastic measures by the federal government's failure to crack down on illegal immigration. Both said that tightening the nation's borders would be the best solution, but that with Congress still divided on immigration policy, they had to take action.

"When you have people begging you to do something, there comes a breaking point," said Barletta, whose family settled in Hazleton when it was a thriving coal center in the early 1900s. "I feel very confident that what we're doing is not only legal, but the right thing to do. I can't sit back and watch my city being destroyed.

"Both mayors, white baby boomers who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, speak wistfully of the days when nuclear families were the only occupants of single-family homes in their towns, every resident paid taxes, and English was the only language heard on the streets. Macklin said the City of Charm, as Avon Park has long called itself, no longer met that description, despite the gazebo and shuffleboard courts on Main Street, several dainty lakes and ubiquitous live oaks.

"When people come to our area," he said, "they see degrading neighborhoods, homes falling down among themselves, four or five vehicles parked in yards. There's a perception for those that come to this area -- looking to perhaps expand a business, move here -- that it might not necessarily be where they want to be.

"Macklin, a Republican whose City Council is nonpartisan, said he had been bombarded with positive feedback since proposing the ordinance in late June, even getting e-mail messages from California and Illinois. But some residents have called him racist, and others, like Joe Wright, a dairy farmer who said two-thirds of his work force was Hispanic, said the ordinance would be unenforceable and unconstitutional.

"It's going to be impossible to police," said Wright, whose dairy, outside the city, has many employees who live in Avon Park. "Are they actually going to have their zoning people and policemen racially profile every Hispanic-looking person? I mean, this just has a very chilling effect.

"Macklin said he expected opposition from citrus growers and cattle farmers, many of whom say that they hire only workers with Social Security cards, but that they cannot be sure the cards are authentic. The law would punish only those who knowingly hired or rented to illegal immigrants, he said.But Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the proposal violated several laws, including the Fair Housing Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

"The real problem is that it's obvious the effect of this will be to discriminate against immigrants and Latinos generally," Bauer said, adding that the center might sue if the ordinance passed.