Riverside, New Jersey is finally relenting in its push to alienate undocumented immigrants. The town made headlines when it passed a law banning businesses from hiring the immigrants. Now that the town treasury has been drained from legal woes and a local economy that is suffering from lack of immigrants. See, the town leaders were deluded in their misguided hate towards these people that they failed to recognize the vital part our new residents play in society. And it doesn't only apply to Riverside.
From The City Room:
The town of Riverside, N.J., passed a law banning businesses from hiring illegal immigrants. It led, as expected, to an exodus of Brazilian and Mexican immigrants from the town, but somewhat unexpectedly, also severely hurt retail businesses. With the local economy suffering, and the town’s budget drained by fighting a lawsuit that some immigrant advocacy groups brought against the town, Riverside decided to repeal the law. As Ken Belson and Jill P. Capuzzo explain, other towns may follow suit.
Nine day laborers represented by a clinic at Yale Law School are filing a federal suit against the mayor and chief of police in Danbury, Conn., today, challenging the constitutionality of a sting operation that led to their arrest on immigration charges last year. The suit contends that the arrests were part of discriminatory and illegal local attempts to enforce federal immigration law after the mayor lost his effort to have State Police officers deputized as immigration agents. Nina Bernstein examines the legal issues at stake.
Danbury will ultimately have to relent in their quest to expel those who are different from local legislators as Riverside just did. Sometimes, xenophobia masks the importance of immigrants in our country. For close to two hundred years now, America has formed into the powerhouse that it is (or was) from new groups of immigrants that come here to make a better life for themselves. These new Americans take jobs that they can not find in their native country and our "natives" decline to sign up for themselves. This went on with the Irish, the Chinese, Eastern Europeans and many, many other ethnic enclaves.
Refusing to acknowledge this history and embrace what is to come is only delaying the inevitable.
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