High Court makes 2 immigration decisions
The U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions Monday dealing with illegal immigration issues - one that might have a direct impact on Fremont.
Justices vacated a federal appellate court decision that declared a Hazleton, Pa., illegal immigration ordinance unconstitutional.
They also rejected a challenge to a California rule that allows colleges and universities to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, a policy similar to those in Nebraska and 11 other states.
Hazleton's ordinance is similar to one approved by Fremont voters in June 2010.
Both would require businesses to use the federal e-Verify database to check to see if a person could legally work in the United States and would pull the business licenses of those firms that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Both also address renting to illegal immigrants.
While Hazleton's former mayor, who is now a member of Congress, called the decision a "huge victory," a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the ordinance, said the case isn't over yet.
"This is great news for the city of Hazleton and all municipalities and states who are trying to cope with the substantial burden imposed by illegal immigrants," U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican from Hazleton, said at a press conference. "The Supreme Court was very clear. It rejected the Third Circuit Court opinion. ... We believe it puts our ordinance in a very good position."
Witolf "Vic" Walczak of the ACLU, which also is one of the group's challenging Fremont's ordinance, stressed the ruling does not reverse the Third Circuit Court's decision. It only directs the court to re-evaluate the case.
"I hate for them to be wasting good champagne, but it's premature for them to be popping the cork. This case ain't over," Walczak said. "The champagne could go bad before Hazleton gets a victory."
He noted the Supreme Court last year returned three other cases to the Third Circuit Court for reconsideration. In two of those three, the court reaffirmed its original ruling.
Barletta said the Supreme Court's recently upholding of an Arizona law that mandates use e-Verify gives Hazleton strong legal footing because key provisions are similar to the city's ordinance. But he acknowledged the Arizona case does not directly address the housing component of Hazleton's ordinance.
Hazleton, like Fremont, has never implemented its ordinance because of the court challenge.
In its other ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to California's version of the Dream Act.
The justices dismissed an appeal from lawyers for a conservative immigration-law group who contended "preferential treatment" for illegal immigrants violated federal immigration law. The group had cited a little-known provision in a 1986 law that barred states from giving "any postsecondary benefit" to an "alien who is not lawfully present in the United States ... on the basis of residence within a state."
But last year, in the first ruling of its kind, the California Supreme Court said the state's policy did not conflict with federal law because the tuition benefit is contingent on a student graduating from a California high school, not the student's place of residence. The state's legislature adopted this policy in 2001.
Nebraska's 2006 Dream Act also requires students to have graduated from an in-state high school.
State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont has twice tried to repeal the Nebraska law, most recently in the last legislative session. The Legislature's Education Committee killed that bill a week after a Lincoln civil-rights attorney told members the Dream Act does not violate federal law.
In the 2009-10 school year, 37 undocumented students were enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and one at a state college.
In California, officials said about 41,000 students last year took advantage of the state's special tuition rule, but the vast majority of those were students at community colleges. In 2009, the 10-campus University of California system said 2,019 students paid in-state tuition under the terms of the state law. Of these, about 600 were believed to be illegal immigrants.
The other states with similar laws are Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.
Another 12 states have explicitly refused to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. For its part, the federal government - through the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations - has taken no steps to enforce the federal provision.
Citing this confusion over the meaning of federal law, the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute had appealed the California case to the Supreme Court. Kris Kobach, a Kansas lawyer and counsel for the group, said the federal law "will become a dead letter in any state where the legislature is willing to play semantic games to defeat the objectives of Congress."
The justices put out a one-line order dismissing the appeal in the case of Martinez v. Board of Regents of the University of California.
Kobach also represents Fremont in its legal challenge over the illegal immigration ordinance.
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