Court rejects challenge to city’s immigration law

[DonViejo]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to a Nebraska city ordinance that bans renting homes to immigrants living in the country illegally.

The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that found the ordinance doesn’t discriminate against Latinos or interfere with federal immigration laws.

The case challenged a 2010 ordinance approved by Fremont, Nebraska, voters requiring potential renters to pay a $5 fee for an occupancy license and show proof of being in the country legally.

Earlier this year, the justices declined attempts by two other towns — in Pennsylvania and Texas — to revive similar laws that had been struck down by lower courts. The high court has held since 2012 that immigration issues are largely a matter for federal agencies, not local governments, to regulate.

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/05/court_rejects_challenge_to_citys_immigration_law/

[Lasher]

1. So what's the difference between the ordinance in Nebraska and the ones in PA and TX?

[fasttense]

2. We'll give them jobs

just don't ask us to rent to them.

What a load of crap laws like this create.

[pampango]

3. Score one for ALEC, FAIR, Tea Party Patriots and Kris Kobach. They have lost more than they have won

of these battles over local anti-immigrant laws but they won one here.

Anti-Immigrant Group Pushes Draconian Nebraska Ordinance

In 2010, voters in Fremont, Nebraska passed an ordinance barring landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants and requiring employers to check new employee’s immigration status. (The employment provision exempted the town’s largest employers, two meatpacking plants just outside of city limits.) Behind the law was Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has made a name for himself by peddling anti-immigrant and voter suppression measures to communities across the country.

Last summer, a federal appeals court upheld the law but a city councilmember has introduced a ballot referendum to repeal parts of it. This has angered proponents of the law, who have set up a group called “Our Vote Should Count” and gathered support from the national nativist group FAIR (a former Kobach employer), according to the Fremont Tribune :

Our Vote Should Count enlisted the help of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Tea Party Patriots, True The Vote, and other national organizations, including a Washington, D.C.-based analyst and an Omaha media consultant, to put together a media campaign that will use social media, print media, flyers and canvassing to get out their message.

Supporters of the Fremont ordinance don’t exactly hide that they are motivated by suspicion of the town’s growing Hispanic population – whether documented or not. One Vote Should count shared this graphic on its Facebook page, which warns that “Fremont is a sanctuary city” because its “Hispanic population TRIPLED! in 10 years”:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/true-vote-works-anti-immigrant-groups-push-draconian-nebraska-ordinance