If only more communities would get off the pot
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — Voters were to decide Saturday whether to repeal or approve an ordinance prohibiting landlords from renting apartments to most illegal immigrants in their Dallas suburb.
Since the City Council approved the ban in November, Farmers Branch has become the site of protests and angry confrontations.
"The thing that strikes me most about it, is just the level of emotion, the level of frustration regarding the whole immigration issue," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
More than 90 local governments around the nation have proposed similar measures, but Farmers Branch is the first to put the issue to a public vote.
The regulation facing voters Saturday requires apartment managers to verify that renters are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants before leasing to them. Minors and people 62 and over are exempt from having to prove their immigration status or citizenship. Families that include both citizens and illegal immigrants could lease if they meet certain conditions.
Good for them. Amazing that anyone has to actually take a vote to determine whether or not they are going to follow the law. Of course, as the story points out, many towns have to do this because the State and Federal authorities are failing to do the job they are tasked with.
Even if voters approved the ban Saturday, opponents planned to seek a restraining order to stop the city from enforcing it and try to get the case to trial.
Let me rewrite that
Even if voters approve the ban Saturday, opponents plan to seek a restraining order to stop the city from enforcing the legal code of the United State of America.
The sorry state of our legal system is that, if the case does go to trial, rather then the judge laughing straight up in the faces of the opponents of the law, they can probably find one sympathetic to ignoring the law.
Update: the people of Farmers Branch voted overwhelmingly for the ordinance.
