Hazleton illegal immigrant laws simplistic, expert witness says
MICHAEL RUBINKAM
The Associated Press
Mar 20, 2007
SCRANTON, Pa. - Federal immigration law is so complex that it can take years for the government to determine whether a person is in the country legally or illegally, an expert witness testified Monday at a trial over Hazleton's illegal immigrant crackdown.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer and co-author of a 20-volume treatise on immigration law, said there are many ways illegal immigrants can "regularize their status," including marrying a U.S. citizen and obtaining political asylum. And even someone facing deportation can take advantage of a lengthy federal appeals process, he said.
"Your current legal status at any given time does not determine whether you may ultimately stay in the United States," said Yale-Loehr, testifying for plaintiffs seeking to overturn Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act.
The ordinance, approved last summer and copied by dozens of towns around the country, penalizes landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and companies that employ them. A companion measure requires tenants to register with City Hall.
Enforcement of the laws has been barred pending the legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic groups, who say the crackdown usurped the federal government's exclusive power over immigration policy, spurred division between whites and Hispanics in the city of 31,000 and caused economic hardship to Hispanic business owners and landlords.
The ACLU called Yale-Loehr to the stand in an effort to show that the local measures fail to account for the nuances of federal immigration law and may wind up hurting people who are eligible for legal residency but are still in the process of getting it.
Earlier Monday, an expert witness called by the city's lawyers testified that immigration depresses wages for lower-skilled U.S. workers.
George Borjas, a Harvard University economist, conducted a 20-year study that concluded that the wages of U.S.-born citizens working in low-skilled jobs decreased by about 8 percent over the short term because of immigrant labor.
His research did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration, but he said illegal immigrants likely reduce wages even more because they are "trying to provide labor at a cheaper wage than they would if they were authorized workers."
If Hazleton successfully removed illegal immigrants, he said, "the demand for unauthorized workers would drop, and that would, in the short run, tend to increase the wage."
