Immigration Resolution Tabled - Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Immigration Resolution TabledThe City Council at the Feb 19th meeting decided to table the proposed immigration resolution. There is no date set for it to be brought up again. Two of the Council members (Pedro Briones and myself) supported the measure and two of the Council members (Mayor Miles and Bryan Knedler) opposed the measure. Council member Alta Morton spoke in favor of the measure but also voted to table the motion as did Mayor Miles and Councilman Knedler.
What happens next? I believe one of the people who tabled the motion would have to decide that it should be brought up again for a vote either in its present form or as a revised/compromise resolution.
I will vote for it if it comes up again but personally feel that it is time to for the Council to work on other issues. We have to start preparing next year’s budget and discuss our budget priorities and what should the tax rate be for the next year. We will be continuing our discussion on development in the downtown area and work on the other important issues our town faces from serious crime to trash pick up.
There has been a lot of discussion in our community on the immigration issue. Over 40 people from Mt. Rainier spoke on the issue at the Council meetings. People have been passionate on the issue and I do not feel that it has been a bad discussion. I have learned a lot by listening to the comments. Many of my neighbors and friends have disagreed with my position (and many have been supportive). At the end of the day we all want to work together to improve our City and I will continue to work hard to do that.
A lot of people wrote me e-mails and I did not respond to each one individually. I do want to let everyone know why I voted for the resolution and have included the comments I made at the Council meeting. Jimmy
Why I am voting in favor of the immigration resolution?
As many of you know I supported this resolution when it was introduced. I did state early on that if the overwhelming sentiment was against the resolution I would not vote for a resolution that people did not want.
After receiving a good many e-mails and listening to the public comment, I believe our community is divided on this issue so there is in fact no mandate on how to vote and it is up to each of us to decide how to vote.
I would like to review what the ordinance actually does. I do not personally believe that it is as controversial as people feel.
Section 1 states that no city employee shall assist in the investigation or arrest of persons solely for civil violations of the immigration and nationality laws. All this states is that the City’s employees shall not get involved in enforcing Federal immigration laws. With our town’s limited resources this makes absolute sense. It is already the policy of our Police Department. Another part of the section. makes it clear that the ordinance will not deter our officers from carrying on their responsibilities to protect our residents.
Section 2 states that no city employee shall inquire into the citizenship or discriminate in the enforcement of rights or granting of benefits based on citizenship. It does not say that city employees should not enforce city code or stop criminal activity
We want to make sure that our residents follow our code regulations and we want them to be willing to cooperate with our city’s employees. We do not want them afraid that by cooperating with our city’s employees they may be deported because they do not have the correct immigration papers.
The ordinance does state very clearly that if a Federal or state benefit is conditioned on citizenship, our city’s employees shall find out about their status in those situations.
Section 3 simply states that we will not discriminate against a resident based on their citizenship status. The point is that whether we are talking about trash pickup, police protection, or any other service, no one is receiving services he or she isn't paying for by paying property taxes, sales tax, and income taxes. It is discriminatory to withhold services from members of the community; it also degrades the quality of life of the community as a whole to withhold services.
While it is often said that undocumented residents do not pay taxes, this is actually not true: not only do they pay property taxes (either as homeowners or in the form of rent) and sales taxes, but in general they also pay income taxes on pay checks.
We want everybody in our town to follow our ordinances and code regulations. We offer services (trash pick-up, police protection, etc.) based on whether residents pay taxes not on their citizenship status. If an owner of a home or a renter contributes his share of the city’s tax revenues they should be provided with the appropriate services.
Section 4 states that except as required by state or federal law, our city’s employees will not release information regarding the citizenship status of any city resident. This is analogous to the confidentiality procedures followed by the US Census Bureau and as required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). There are two aspects of this: such confidentiality helps society in general, by helping healthcare providers, the census bureau, law enforcement, etc., do their job better by encouraging people to provide accurate information (for example the control of infectious disease is highly dependent on this). And confidentiality helps individuals by protecting privacy, a right we all wish to guard.
People active in healthcare, law enforcement, and other areas working with community can attest to the fact that local laws that target undocumented workers have a chilling effect on the community relations with all of the Latino community, the majority of which is documented.
There are exceptions listed in the ordinance: when information is specifically required or need to help with the investigation of a criminal manner.
There have been two objections to this ordinance that I would like to address:
First, the ordinance will attract undocumented residents into our town and be a drain our resources.
I just do not believe this to be true. I believe that people move into our City because it is an affordable place to live with very good housing stock. Takoma Park passed a similar ordinance and it has not become the magnet for thousands of undocumented immigrants.
I also believe that the immigrants in who have come into our community have been in large part responsible residents who have spent time fixing up their houses and increasing the property values in our town.
Second, we do not need this ordinance. This is a federal issue.
The immigration laws are definitely a federal issue but how we deal with diversity in our community is definitely a local issue. I think this ordinance is a positive statement about how we are dealing with diversity in our community. We live in a great community with many ethnic groups. One of my goals has been to get the Latino community more involved in our City. I am not naive enough to think that this ordinance will by itself get our Latino residents more involved but I think doing this and getting our newsletter printed in Spanish are steps we need to take to overcome some of the barriers that we face in our town.
I have thought about this a good deal and do agree with those folks that say it is not absolutely necessary to pass this ordinance. The City will not be irreparably damaged if this ordinance had not been introduced.
But I do not think we can separate ourselves from the divisions within our country and the national debate on the immigration laws in our country. Councilman Briones has stated that some of his incentive to introduce the ordinance is in response to some of the anti-immigrant activity that is occurring in parts of Virginia and elsewhere in our country. He has stated that he wanted our town to go on record that we were a welcoming community and that we were not concerned as much about people’s immigration status as much as whether they will become good residents of our City and I must say I agree with him.
When I decided to run for local office it was mainly to help our community be a better place to help with fixing our streets, bringing in new development, and helping with traffic and crime problems in our city. But I always have weighed how I can do some of this work without losing site of trying to work on more important global issues that effect our community and our country. I firmly believe that passing an ordinance that states that we will not ask questions about people’s immigration status puts us on record that we think the immigration laws in this country are broken and that we are a community that welcomes immigrants into a community.
This is not a new discussion. It is a debate that has gone on in this country for close to two hundred years. How we regulate immigration into our community and how we respond to the new immigrants in our community. It is a discussion that we are having as neighbors and as friends. I may disagree with people’s points of view but I respect that they have spoken out on the issue when.
I will be voting in support of this resolution.