PrintJuly 28, 2007
NYT's ridiculous editorial on Hazleton
The New York Times today runs a fire-breathing editorial "Humanity versus Hazleton", wholeheartedly praising a Pennsylvania judge for striking down an ordinance of the city of Hazleton that sought to enforce the laws against the hiring of illegal aliens or as the Times chooses to spin it:
sought to harshly punish undocumented immigrants for trying to live and work there, and employers and landlords for providing them with homes and jobs.
The paper gratuitously engages in an ad hominen attack against the mayor of Hazleton and then goes on to hold that local communities cannot be involved in immigration or other matters that are a federal concern:
First, immigration is a federal responsibility. State and local governments have no right to usurp or upend a vast, "carefully drawn federal statutory scheme" that governs who enters the country and the conditions under which immigrants stay, study, work and naturalize. Congress may be botching the job, but it has not delegated it.
One might be tempted to treat this as a principled, but wrong-head stand. However, how has the Times responded to the trend of places declaring themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, where federal writ presumably ends regarding immigration laws? Has the Times ever editorialized against the sanctuary movement and how these acts are violations of federal immigration laws? I cannot recall one such editorial criticizing the outbreak of these sanctuaries, which are proliferating.
How about laws-such as the one in New York City that prevent police from inquiring about the immigrations status of people who violate the laws? Aren't these restrictions interfering with federal law?
Furthermore, has the paper ever criticized the various communities (usually liberal-leaning) that have exempted themselves from various elements of the homeland security laws and have loudly announced their goal of not abiding by various security provisions ? These are also federal concerns ,since terrorists might come to use one of these "safe" communities to plan and commit acts of terror in other jurisdictions. I cannot recall a Times editorial criticizing the usurpation and subsequent evisceration of federal laws by these local communities.
However one may feel about the immigration issue, the mayor of Hazleton was merely trying to enforce laws against the hiring of illegal aliens. He was trying to preserve jobs for the citizens of his community and for those people who abide by the laws. He was not a "vigilante" who was "hunting" people who were trying to live and work in his community, as the Times disparages him. He was not in any sense dehumanizing them, nor were his "restrictionist soul mates in the Senate" loading the immigration bill with "unworkable cruelties" before they pushed the failed immigration deal into a ditch.
They were merely trying to enforce the law and protect out citizens' jobs.
