I checked out the Hazleton, PA, website before we arrived here on day three of our road trip, fully expecting a fairly straightforward local government website that provides basic information for residents (about everything from garbage collection schedule to parks and recreation facilities) and promotes the city/town to outsiders: touts the local economy to attract investors, highlights the family-friendly amenities, the local culture, etc. And it starts out normally enough, with a letter from Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta in which he writes, �Welcome to the City of Hazleton's new web site! A great deal of effort has gone into making this web site a great resource for the Citizens of Hazleton, as well as visitors from outside our region."
But then the site takes a weird turn. At the end of the letter, he writes, �If you are looking for information on illegal immigration or Small Town Defenders, you may access that site via this link."
It�s clear Mayor Barletta has leveraged the issue of illegal immigration for political gain: he pushed through an ordinance in 2006 that would penalize residents for hiring or renting to undocumented immigrants, which was challenged and overturned, a decision the city of Hazleton is now appealing. The ordinance also served as a model for the scores upon scores of similar policies that other local and state governments have entertained. Barletta gained a lot of national attention, handily won reelection, and is now running for Congress.
But to highlight, on the city�s website, an issue that has been so contentious in Hazleton and across the nation, and then to provide a direct link to another website in which the Mayor flexes his anti-immigrant muscle, is something else entirely.
The Small Town Defenders website solicits contributions, apparently to cover the costs of the litigation over the ordinance as it wends its way through the courts. On the site, the mayor writes, �I�m Lou Barletta, the proud Mayor of the City of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
"I believe the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth. People who are in this country have an incredible amount of opportunities and blessings.
�But some people have taken advantage of America�s openness and tolerance. Some come to this country and refuse to learn English, creating a language barrier for city employees. Others enter the country illegally and use government services by not paying taxes or by committing crime on our streets, further draining resources here in Hazleton.
"Recent crimes � such as a high-profile murder, the discharge of a gun at a crowded city playground, and drug busts � have involved illegal immigrants. �Illegal aliens in our City create an economic burden that threatens our quality of life. With a growing problem and a limited budget, I could not sit back any longer and allow this to happen. I needed to act! That�s why I drafted the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, a measure designed to say enough is enough.
�To the residents of Hazleton, I say thank you for your support. To our recently arrived legal immigrants, I say welcome to our City. I wish you all the best and hope the United States and Hazleton can be a place where your dreams come true. I am proud to represent you as your Mayor.
�And to illegal immigrants and those who would hire or abet them in any way, I say your time is up. You are no longer welcome.�
We�ve heard plenty from politicians over the past several years along these lines. That doesn�t surprise me. Politicians know that they can tap into the public�s understandable concern about our broken immigration system and feed the fires of discontent and gain a lot of visibility. But to actually include this sort of rhetoric and provide a direct link to it from the city of Hazleton�s official promotional website strikes me as, at best, perverse. It�s especially weird when much of the local economy depends on the big companies the city has lured to Hazleton�s industrial park: a Cargill meatpacking plant, for instance, among other companies, and, soon, Amazon, which will establish a warehouse there. The companies come, but they have to recruit nationwide, because Hazleton�s aging local population can�t provide the workers these companies need. And so the mayor�s economic development strategy has, in fact, brought in the very population he now maligns.
From what we saw in our visit to Hazleton, the town is battle-weary. The controversy over the ordinance, and the endless glare of publicity it generated for the town, has left residents wary and tired. A local reporter told us that while the �homegrown� residents of Hazleton overwhelmingly support the mayor, most folks have shifted their focus to the economy now. To a certain extent, the town became a hotspot in the immigration debate not because the controversy was generated from the bottom up, but rather from the top down: the mayor saw that immigration provided an easy focal point for people who were feeling the stresses of a town having a tough time meeting its budget, keeping enough cops on the street, trying to keep its kids out of trouble, and adapting to an increasing immigrant population with the normal transition pains that such a shift entails.
A community advocate told us, �At first it wasn�t so bad, the tension between the native born and immigrants. Issues going on in this town are the same issues that would go on anywhere where you go from twenty-odd thousand to thirty thousand. At first it was like, �Hispanics are a little loud, and they listen to their music, and stay up late,� that sort of tension, that sort of discomfort, but then you become neighbors, and you figure it out and you get to know each other and you get to the point where you can say, �Do you mind turning the music down after 9:00?� We were getting to that place here. But when the mayor came out with this thing, it all blew up, it was like a very negative wildfire that spread through a big forest.�
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