By NANCY VICKERS-PYLE
Highlands Today

AVON PARK - “Thank you for calling the city of Avon Park. For English, press one.” That message continues with similar words in Spanish.

But that is subject to change if City Council members give final approval to an ordinance that makes English the official language of the city on July 10.

That ordinance was added to the council agenda late last week and was given initial approval by the council at the regular meeting Monday.

The ordinance goes beyond declaring an official language. The ordinance provides a $1,000 fine to any landlord who rents property to illegal aliens and the same fine for any person or business that knowingly employs an illegal alien.

Mayor Tom Macklin introduced the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance that mirrors an ordinance that was also initially approved by the city of Hazleton, Pa.

“I would like to have the City Council pass this on first reading. We have been hamstrung and handcuffed by the issues of having illegal aliens around. This is something the majority of the community would support.

“This would send a strong message to the community on what it is we’d like to do, and put the rest of the county on notice that if we make it difficult for illegal aliens to do business here they will go somewhere else,” Macklin said.

City Councilman Doug Eason made the motion to pass the ordinance and Macklin seconded it. Council members George Hall and Sharon Schuler voted no and Brenda Gray joined Macklin and Eason’s vote of approval.

“If there’s no legal housing for illegal aliens, then they won’t necessarily live in this area,” Macklin added.

“Very few of them are going to walk here from Lake Placid to find work. Our first line of defense is the landlords that typically rent or lease to illegal aliens,” he said.

Macklin said illegal aliens were living in deteriorated housing and were taking jobs from legal citizens.

“There are a number of jobs out there that we could be doing if it wasn’t for the fact that some employers hire illegal immigrants for cheap labor taking jobs from people who could do the work,” Macklin said.

Establishing English as the official language of the city would apply to all official city business, not to private businesses or conversations on the street, he said.

“We’re not singling any language out or any respective community,” he said.

Not Right
Maria Rodriquez is the director of the Florida Immigration Advocacy, a pro immigration group. “It’s sad that a municipality would be preoccupied with something that is already in place on the federal level. This sends a message of exclusion rather than integration and inclusion. I’m not a lawyer but I don’t think it is legal to discriminate. I believe it is unconstitutional. This is racial profiling.” Rodriquez said.

Rodriquez said her research shows that about four of 20 businesses in the city were of Latino derivation and that the ordinance was sending a hostile message to the Hispanic population.

She said she was not aware that Hispanics were contributing to criminal activity but if that were the case local law enforcement would be the entity that would respond to that. Ray Royce, director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, said the same thing and added, “If you have a deteriorating neighborhood, then code enforcement deals with that.”

Hall said that he wanted to know more about how the ordinance would be enforced.

“It’s like the fire assessment tax. If we can’t enforce it, then it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Hall said.

Royce said enforcement is already in place with the Immigration and Naturalization Services, and that citrus growers depend on migrant labor. Growers he knows employ legal immigrants, he added.

“But for a town to start profiling people, that can be very dangerous. Are they going to go house to house? Will they be able to verify the documentation?” Royce asked.

“What he wants is a little clamor, a scare tactic to try and get Hispanics to move out of Avon Park. There are jobs out there like picking fruit or pulling weeds that most of us prefer not to do. When you have full employment like you do here, you need immigrant labor to do the work, long-term and legally.

“There’s a few bad apples in any ethnic group. What I found when I was in private business is that Hispanics are good family people, are hard-working and I applaud them for that.

Royce said, “They are making money here and sending it home. They also spending money here. They shop in Winn-Dixie. They are paying sales tax on gas and food. I don’t see a lot of Hispanic criminal activity here but if there is than that falls to law enforcement. If you have poor housing and neighborhoods that are deteriorating, you have code enforcement in place.”

Is It Constitutional?
Jeanne Butterfield is the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She said such an ordinance would likely “wind its way through the legal system before it will be determined whether it is constitutional or not.”

“Generally, immigration issues are dealt with federally and not on the state level,” Butterfield said.

She said federal policy on immigration found some states’ attempt to use trespassing charges to bar immigration as unconstitutional.

Therefore, it is likely, local immigration ordinances would go the same way.

On the subject of English language only, Butterfield said there is no federal law that mandates English only, with good reason.

“Immigrants want to learn the English language,” she said, backing that with the miles long lists of immigrants who want to take ESOL courses, English speaking classes for those who speak other languages.

She said learning to speak English for immigrants is a process. By the third generation, most have lost their native language. It helps the integration. It makes them more informed citizens.

Federal policy already requires employers to verify an employee’s status, and that there are too many methods of getting citizenship for a landlord to be able to determine whether someone was legal or illegal.

“What would happen is a landlord might try to avoid renting to anyone who looked or sounded foreign,” Butterfield said.

She said the landlord issue most likely violates equal protection laws.

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