Testimony contentious at times (Hazleton Standard-Speaker)

By KENT JACKSON
Staff Writer

SCRANTON – Attorney Tom Wilkinson pointed to a paragraph in Hazleton’s immigration act that says the city is mandated to “abate the nuisance of illegal immigration” and posed a question.

“Say a person is working and his visa expires. Is he a nuisance?”

“Is he illegal?” city Council President Joseph Yannuzzi responded.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Wilkinson, adding that to determine legal status requires special training.

“I wouldn’t know either,” Yannuzzi answered Tuesday during a trial in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to decide whether the act is constitutional.

Their exchange occurred as Wilkinson scrutinized the act, which his clients challenge, during a direct examination of Yannuzzi.

The act that council adopted in response to crime, including a murder on May 10, 2006, penalizes those who rent to or hire illegal immigrants, but has never taken effect.

Judge James M. Munley froze the act until he issues a decision on its constitutionality after the trial. So the question-and-answer session between Yannuzzi and Wilkinson helped to clarify some provisions and illustrate what could happen if the law is enforced.

Wilkinson asked why council didn’t hire a consultant or commission a study the effects before voting on the act and a companion landlord-tenant act.

Isn’t it the biggest package of ordinances that council has considered? Wilkinson asked.

“It turned out that way, but prior to that it was just an ordinary ordinance to control crime,” Yannuzzi said.

Since June when the first version of the IIRA was proposed, perhaps 80 other municipalities have considered similar laws. Mayor Louis Barletta has spoken about it to national media and a committee of the U.S. Senate.

Despite the law’s importance, some of its provisions seemed obscure Tuesday.

Why does one paragraph define an illegal immigrant under U.S. Code Title 8 subsection 1324a(h)(3) and then require a code officer to submit data about the person pursuant to a different section, 1373? Wilkinson asked.

Yannuzzi didn’t know, nor did he know “the appropriate federal agency” to which the act says code officers should forward complaints.

Normally, council waits at least 10 days between the first and final readings of an act, yet in September 2006 the council approved all readings within three days.

Why the rush? Wilkinson wondered.

Yannuzzi said council wanted to train code officers and other city officials in enforcement before the act took effect.

“We wanted to do it as fast as we could,” he said.

Training has been on hold since the judge issued the restraining order.

If a lease is breached because a tenant is an illegal immigrant, as the act requires, does the tenant or the landlord keep the rent? Wilkinson asked.

The question remained unresolved Tuesday, but city officials Samuel Monticello, the director of administration; Rick Wech, code officer; and Robert Dougherty, city engineer, are scheduled to testify today. Both sides also expect to call Barletta to the stand later in the trial.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson said he counted nine times that council voted on revisions to the IIRA, an English-only bill once part of the act and the landlord-tenant act.

Council scheduled another vote Thursday to delete words “primarily or solely” from an IIRA provision saying: “A complaint which alleges a violation solely or primarily on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, or race shall be deemed invalid and shall not be enforced.”

Opponents said the provision allowed complaints partly based on those factors to proceed and argued that the act legalized discrimination.

Excluding that phrase at the start might have saved the city money and trouble in the case, plaintiff’s attorneys said before court convened Tuesday, but Barletta said the phrase was inserted to discourage discrimination.

Given yet-another revision is underway, wouldn’t council have benefited from hiring a neutral consultant? Wilkinson asked
Yannuzzi a second time.

In any law the council approves, someone loses, Yannuzzi said.

“The pooper-scooper law – why not do a study on that? It’s the same thing,” Yannuzzi said.

“So removing these people is the same as removing something from the sidewalk?” Wilkinson said.

Yannuzzi then asked if one murder “on our streets” isn’t important.