THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Small Town America Lawyers Up For The Fight Against Illegal Immigration: As one by one, towns like Hazleton, PA, and Farmers Branch, TX, have been forced to back down from efforts to prevent landlords from renting to forged documented aliens and business owners from employing them, other towns are stepping up to try a new legal approach to the problem that can withstand the well-financed court challenges mounted by the ACLU and a panoply of activist groups. Plainfield, NJ, has become the latest entrant into the ongoing war against illegal immigration, reports The Associated Press:
A federal lawsuit using a novel method to challenge a landlord's right to rent to illegal immigrants is stoking tensions that have been rising for years in this diverse city of 50,000 south of Newark.
A prominent group that opposes illegal immigration sued a Plainfield property management company this month, seeking to set a legal precedent by using anti-racketeering legislation to crack down on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants.
The suit alleges the company has so many undocumented tenants in their buildings that it constitutes unlawful harboring and should be considered by the courts as a criminal enterprise that encourages illegal immigration.
The suit was brought by the Immigration Reform Law Institute - the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform - against Connolly Properties on behalf of a former Connolly employee and two tenants who are U.S. citizens.
The tenants allege they were steered into buildings occupied by illegal immigrants who were too afraid about their legal status to complain about decrepit conditions, according to Mike Hethmon, a lawyer for the group that filed the suit.
The Plainfield case may have legs because it focuses, in part, on how the illegals themselves were harmed by their unscrupulous landlord.
† Fed Up With Farmers: With four million acres of farmland inundated in the Midwest floods, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is pressuring the U.S. Department of Agriculture Department to void contracts with farmers who took money from the federal government to keep some of their land fallow in the Conservation Reserve Program. Well before the floods, farmers were opting out of the program that turns farmland into wildlife habitats because they were getting top dollar for corn, thanks to federal mandates for ethanol production. The New York Times reports that these federal mandates could be eased in response to a natural disaster, allowing corn to be used as animal feed, but “Grassley, a strong ethanol backer, rejected that proposition”:
A quarter of the United States corn crop is used for biofuels rather than animal or human food, and the percentage is rising. What this has done to the price of gasoline is debated by ethanol’s critics and defenders, but it has certainly benefited farmers, who have not seen such demand for their corn crop in decades.
On the losing side of the equation have been cattle, hog and chicken producers, as well as consumers. The government’s latest projection, released Friday, is that food prices this year will rise as much as 5.5 percent. Some products, including cereals and eggs, are expected to rise about 10 percent. …
In April, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas did just that, saying the “misguided” mandate was devastating the livestock industry in Texas. He asked for a large decrease in ethanol requirements to free up corn for use as animal feed. …
About 34 million acres are enrolled in the government’s biggest conservation program, known as the Conservation Reserve Program. Farmers enroll their land for as long as a decade and cannot take it out without paying severe penalties.
In response to the complaints of farmers who wanted to have their cake and eat it, too – that is, get the government money to participate in the conservation program but not leave their land completely unused – the USDA struck a compromise that allows farmers to pay a nominal $75 fee to use some set-aside land for hay and grazing after grass-nesting birds have flown the nest. “Environmental and hunting groups generally went along with that shift, but were quick to decry Mr. Grassley’s latest proposal,” reports The Times.
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